


You've Got Mail

by gth694e



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Exactly What It Says on the Tin, M/M, More tags to be added, Slow Burn, look guys it's literally You've Got Mail SHIELD style, while literally being best friend penpals
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2020-03-27 15:56:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 30,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19016071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gth694e/pseuds/gth694e
Summary: Agent Phil Coulson is determined to capture and recruit Hawkeye—a ruthless mercenary who never misses his mark. Clint Barton is the Amazing Hawkeye, who would rather be dead than in the control of a shadowy government organization.They also happen to be CapRogers@hotmail.com and DGrayson@aol.com: comic book nerds and best internet friends.While Phil and Clint struggle against each other in real life—as Phil attempts to catch and flip the legendary assassin—over the internet, they fall in love.(This is literally You’ve Got Mail re-done with Phil Coulson and Clint Barton.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Rating is for Clint's dirty mouth and SHIELD typical violence. Rating could possibly go up later.
> 
> This is going to be a serial, you guys. I know I've never done a serial before, but I have some good beta readers (the lovely concertigrossi and kat-har) and five chapters of backlog already written. (All mistakes are my own, and generally because I changed things after concertigrossi and kat-har looked at them lol).
> 
> I will be posting weekly on the weekends (my aim is Fridays but don't be surprised when it slips to the occasional Saturday).

Phil Coulson slid the last completed form into the manila envelope—already labeled with the destination—and then dropped the folder in his outbox. He was done. After this hell of an op finally every last personnel form, ammunition form, after-action report, debrief statement, and intelligence dossier was done. God, Phil couldn’t wait for the day when all of the forms were on the computer—a day that SHIELD IT and HR both swore was imminent, though they had been saying that for the past two years. Technology changed fast, but bureaucracy it seemed was always lagging ten years behind. As it was now, Phil’s computer really only served the purpose of letting him type up his own reports and print them out before sending them via intra-office mail.

Phil leaned back in his chair, groaning as he stretched. How long had he been hunched over his desk reading and reviewing the forms of this cluster of an op? He glanced at the clock and groaned again. He had started the paperwork when the team had returned early Thursday morning. Now it was 10 pm. On Friday night.

He needed to go home. He needed to eat something. He needed to sleep. And most importantly, he needed a shower. But what he wanted on the other hand… His eyes strayed to his own computer, which was currently displaying toasters flying through space.

His fingers itched to awaken the screen and log-in, but not to check his work email which was undoubtedly full of emails about the op. No, it was 10 pm. Phil wanted to drown himself in fan forums. But mostly he wanted to check his personal email and see if DGrayson had responded to his latest email.

 _DGrayson_. It wasn’t his real name, but rather a shortening of Dick Grayson, the original Robin. Phil didn’t know his correspondent’s real name, just like he never shared his. The less known on the Internet about Phil Coulson the better, and it seemed that Grayson had the same philosophy. They never shared anything specific, but it was amazing how personal you could get with a person even without specifics.

Fuck it, it was ten pm. If HR wanted to yell at him about checking his personal email at the office, he would just point out that he had worked eighty hours this week and they had only paid him for forty of them.

A few keystrokes later and he was connected—the glories of working for SHIELD. He was always connected, and didn’t have to worry about it blocking his phone line. And there, in bold black in his inbox was indeed a new email.

———

 **From: DGrayson@aol.com**  
**To: CapRogers@hotmail.com**  
**Subject: Happy First Day of Spring!**  
**Date: March 20, 2001**

I know you said you would be busy this week so I don’t expect you to respond anytime soon. No worries. I’m pretty crazy myself. I just…there’s something about spring, you know?

Or maybe you don’t being a city boy. But I grew up in the country. We were actually on a farm—my family had lost most of the land to the corporations a long time ago, but we still had a pretty big garden, and every spring even when I was too small to do anything real my mom would let me dig in the dirt and help plant bulbs and seeds. I never did anything right, but man, my mom was the best. And I guess…that’s just what spring makes me think of. The smell of the dirt, my mom’s smile and patience, and just good times.

And there weren’t a lot of good times.

Anyway, sorry for the sentimental crap. It’s just there aren’t a lot of people I have to talk to about this sort of stuff, and there is something just easier about typing it out to you, a total stranger, whose name I don’t even know.

Turns out you’re my free therapy, Cap!

I hope you get a chance to stop and smell the roses this week.

— — —

Phil smiled sadly at his computer. This wasn’t the first time Grayson had alluded to his childhood being not so great; it was one of the first things he had learned about him, right after the fact that Dick Grayson was his favorite superhero. Phil had demanded to know why Dick Grayson of all characters was his favorite, and the other man had told him his parents had died and with no extended family he had been sent to the foster system. Grayson had apparently found hope in the character of the original Robin. If Robin could find a new family like Batman and  make something of his life, then well, couldn’t he do the same?

Honestly what amazed Phil in all of this is that Grayson still had the ability to be sentimental, to find hope and joy in comic books, and wish Phil a happy spring. Phil had had a pretty decent childhood—parents who tried—and yet in his teenage angst, he had gone down a dark path. The only thing that had straightened him out was the military—learning discipline and seeing during his overseas tours what true poverty and destitution looked like. That Grayson could survive the death of his parents and the foster system, and still be able to stop and smell the roses…it was astounding.

Assuming he was as young as Phil thought he was—mid-twenties by Phil’s estimation. Time and therapy could also give the same peace and clarity. But something about Grayson’s writings and thoughts, Phil didn’t think the man was yet thirty.

The email from Grayson had been sent on Tuesday and now it was Friday. It would wait until he got home to answer it, but Grayson had been waiting for a response for this long, Phil didn’t want to make him wait any longer.

— — —

 **From: CapRogers@hotmail.com**  
**To: DGrayson@aol.com**  
**Subject: Re: Happy First Day of Spring!**  
**Date: March 23, 2001**

You caught me, I hadn’t even noticed it was spring yet, but that’s not because of being a city boy. I’ve been trapped in my office all week. The only thing I’ve smelled this week is pencil shavings and the body odor of nervous interns. There was a big disaster with a client this week—not one of mine, one of my coworkers—but they messed it up so badly that the account has been handed off to me. And just…the paperwork. I’m drowning in triplicate.

But I have today and tomorrow off. The boss told us all to go home and regroup. We’ll come back fresh and ready to attack the problem on Monday morning. So maybe this weekend I’ll take a leisurely walk through the park and find some roses to smell.

There is something about Central Park in the spring. Just seeing everything come back to life after being dormant all winter, seeing the green breaking through the washed out brown earth. And I love the part of spring where the trees are covered with flowers rather than leaves, how everything is just bright and colorful.

I don’t usually get much of a chance to enjoy it, which is unfortunate. But this weekend I will, just for you.

And I’m always happy to be your listening ear, Grayson. I’m glad it helps.

— — —

Phil re-read his email before hitting send, double checking he wasn’t saying anything that implicated him as a SHIELD agent. He had given Grayson the general impression he was in the corporate world. It was the same carefully curated persona he allowed his neighbors and outside of SHIELD acquaintances believe; though he never directly lied to anyone if he could help it. And nothing in his email was a lie. There had been a disaster this week. Sitwell’s Hawkeye Op had gone sideways in the worst possible way. Five different agents were in Medical, and they hadn’t even gotten a glimpse of Hawkeye’s face. He had taken them down with arrows before they could even get close, and the man had disappeared without a trace. Assistant Director Fury was livid that a team of SHIELD agents could be stopped by a mercenary with a Paleolithic weapon.

And the worst part was Sitwell was the third agent sent after Hawkeye. Three SHIELD teams had tried and failed. So now the Hawkeye situation was Phil’s problem. And well, Phil Coulson never failed.

Or so Fury was counting on.

Yes, next week was going to be a long week as Phil continued to deal with the fallout and make his own plan for eliminating the Hawkeye threat. But for now he had the weekend, and Grayson was right.

He was going to stop and smell the roses.

 

#

 

Clint Barton limped into the library shortly after opening.

“Morning Debbie,” he said with a smile, waving to the librarian who worked the information desk most weekends.

“Morning, Frank!” Her smile quickly turned to concern as she saw his limp. “Are you okay?”

Clint made a face. “Fell off my horse.” A lie, though he did fall—just off a building. The horse lie was more believable out here in the country though, where farming and horses were part of every day life.

“Ah, well.” She made a sympathetic face. “You know what they say. You just gotta get right back on.”

“You don’t need to worry about me, Deb,” he said, giving her his most flirtatious smile. “Nothing’s going to stop me from riding.” She giggled and Clint passed by her with a wink. On some days he stayed and chatted, but today, he had other things on his mind. Like the fact that some obviously government but nebulously identified organization was after him. Or the fact that his Internet friend CapRogers hadn’t responded to him since his email on Tuesday. Honestly at this point, he wasn’t sure which issue was bothering him more—no, that was a lie. He knew how to handle nebulous government organizations. He didn’t know how to reach through a computer and demand someone respond to his email.

It was probably nothing. Cap got busy. It happened all the time. He had some highfalutin corporate job—some sort of consultant, Clint thought, who got flown from place to place to fix problems. It wasn’t unusual for Cap to drop off the Internet for a week or two, just like sometimes in the midst of a job, Clint couldn’t get to a library.

One day, Clint dreamed of having his own computer, of being able to trawl through the forums in his own time and at his own pace, but that required having a steady address where he could pay for Internet, not to mention his own computer. So for now, libraries it was.

It was early enough that there was no demand for the computers, so Clint settled into one of the computer carrels. He connected to the Internet, chicken-pecked in his user name and password and sure enough. “You’ve got mail!” the cheerful AOL voice declared. And thank fuck, it wasn’t just spam. It was an honest-to-God email from CapRogers.

Clint devoured it. _But this weekend I will_ , he said _, just for you._

Something warmed inside of Clint. Clint wasn’t an idiot. He knew he lived a dead-end life, and that it would undoubtedly end soon with someone blowing his brains out. This wasn’t the life he had ever imagined himself—being a hired gun, taking down more people than he cared to think about because it was the only thing he was good at, the only way to keep food on the table and fuck it all, he couldn’t go back to being hungry ever again. He was weak okay? But this thing he had with CapRogers, it was probably the only pure thing in his life.

Cap didn’t know Clint was a murderer a dozen times over, so deep in a life of crime there was no way he could ever crawl out. No, to Cap, Clint was just another comic book fan, and well, that wasn’t a lie. Clint loved comics—the hope and justice, the goodness and purity, how right and good always won, and yes he recognized the fucking irony of the fact that he was basically a comic book villain. But in comic books things were easy and black and white, good people lived good lives, and orphans were adopted by rich billionaires, not left to rot in boys homes. Comic books were a dream, and Dick Grayson had been young Clint’s ultimate aspiration. Instead, Clint was Dick Grayson’s inverse. The circus performer adopted by the villain instead of the hero.

So yes, Clint may be a villain, or at least a crook, but reading this email he could say he did some little good in the world. He convinced Cap to take a walk through the park, to stop and enjoy life, instead of letting himself be buried by work.

Clint re-read the email, but he didn’t rush to respond. He always carefully responded—with a dictionary by his side so he could double check his spelling. He didn’t want Cap to know he was just an uneducated carnie. He wanted Cap to like and respect him, so he always deliberately wrote his responses. But before he could get to that, he needed to spend some time researching the problem that was actively trying to kill him: the government agency that wouldn’t leave him alone.

They’d come after him three times now—and each time Clint had managed to escape. He wasn’t sure how they found him any of those times, which was one of the reasons why he suspected they were a government organization. Every time they had come after him was on ops when he was working for a larger crime organization—as opposed to the occasional one off he did for individual people. A government agency might have people embedded in those organizations, who reported back whenever Clint was hired.

The other reason he thought they were government was that it was clearly a coordinated effort, including SWAT-like teams and individuals attempting to be undercover tracking him. Of course, they couldn’t account for his sharp eyes, and that Clint could tell when someone was really casual as opposed to pretending to be casual.

Clint pecked his way through various searches, pulling up websites and pages for various government organizations, trying to figure out which one it was. The group had found him both in the US and Mexico—so probably not the FBI or CIA, unless the two groups were working together—but surely Clint wasn’t that big a threat. He was just a low level mercenary. Sure he’d killed some—okay a lot—of people. But mostly for drug lords and cartels. If he did the occasional charity case of offing an abused wife’s husband, well, he didn’t really think that was something the CIA would care about, would they?

Unless it was just the sheer numbers he’d killed getting him on the radar. Clint supposed there was such a thing as being too good at your job.

Of course the agents following him hadn’t been wearing anything as obvious as SWAT gear. There were no emblems or insignias or ranks for Clint to research. Just a coordinated group of people who seemed to be able to track him down in both domestic and international locales. Which was frankly just fucking annoying.

Clint huffed with frustration at the computer. Wouldn’t it be nice if he could just ask it for what he wanted? Like Star Trek. “Computer, research what government agency is tracking me.” And then boom, it would come up with an answer. But despite the fact that it was the fucking 21st century (if barely), Clint was still chicken-pecking at a keyboard. Ugh.

Clint re-opened his email.

— — —

 **From: DGrayson@aol.com**  
**To: CapRogers@hotmail.com**  
**Subject: The Future**  
**Date: March 24, 2001**

Do you ever get frustrated with the fact that we live in the 21st century, and it’s nothing like we were promised it would be? We were supposed to have flying cars, space colonies, and sentient robots! Instead we have all this technology, and the closest thing we have to Star Trek technology is cell phones. It’s just frustrating. Comic books promised me this bright shiny future, and yet here I am struggling to use a computer to do basic research.

Ten year old me would be so disappointed in the year 2001.

— — —

 **From: CapRogers@hotmail.com**  
**To: DGrayson@aol.com**  
**Subject: Re: The Future**  
**Date: March 24, 2001**

I understand. Sometimes I look at the world and it seems we’ve made no progress. We still have poverty, racism, corruption, and unimaginable horrors. I imagine Captain America miraculously appearing and seeing the world as it is today, and I wonder what he would think. Would he be dazzled by television? Amazed that we went to the moon? Or disappointed in us as a nation, as a people, and as a world. He fought so hard in the 1940s—to integrate his unit and save the world. And what have we done with it?

Also ten year old me would be expecting to live on a moon base by now.

— — —

 **From: DGrayson@aol.com**  
**To: CapRogers@hotmail.com**  
**Subject: Re: The Future**  
**Date: March 24, 2001**

City boy would pick the moon. Me? I want Mars. Red land for as far as the eye can see, unadulterated and ready to be explored by the few brave men and women who survive the journey there.

— — —

 **From: CapRogers@hotmail.com**  
**To: DGrayson@aol.com**  
**Subject: Re: The Future**  
**Date: March 24, 2001**

You’re such a cowboy.

Also I walked through Central Park this morning. It may be spring but it wasn’t even above fifty and nothing is growing. But it was nice. Just taking a walk, by myself, in the crisp morning air. Things have been so crazy, and something about the morning quiet and the cold, just helped clear my head and center me.

I should really take time for myself like this more often. But work is always so demanding, and everyone always needs my help. And it always seems that if I don’t help them, the world will end.

I need to do better at remembering that I can’t save the world if I’ve lost myself.

— — —

 **From: DGrayson@aol.com**  
**To: CapRogers@hotmail.com**  
**Subject: Re: The Future**  
**Date: March 25, 2001**

Guilty as charged, Cap. Give me the open frontier over the city any day.

And I know what you mean about losing yourself. Sometimes I think I don’t even know who I am anymore. Do you ever just look at your life and think—this wasn’t the path I was meant to be on. Ten year old me wouldn’t just be disappointed in the world. He would be disappointed in me.

— — —

 **From: CapRogers@hotmail.com**  
**To: DGrayson@aol.com**  
**Subject: Re: The Future**  
**Date: March 25, 2001**

Well, whatever decisions you made, whatever path you’re on, it brought you to this neighborhood friendly Internet and me. So I can’t claim too much disappointment.

And if you think your path is wrong, it’s never too late to change your trajectory, and put yourself on a different path. It won’t be easy, but it’s not impossible. It’s never too late to make your ten-year-old self proud of you.

And if there is ever anything I can do to help you, Grayson, just let me know.

— — —

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really hope you guys enjoyed this start! I've really enjoyed writing this fic and I'm really excited to see where it takes us! I hope you guys like it!
> 
> As always you can follow me on tumblr at [the-feels-assassin](https://the-feels-assassin.tumblr.com/)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phil Coulson buries himself into files on the mercenary Hawkeye, trying to find a break in the case. Meanwhile, Clint Barton takes a break.

Phil Coulson’s office had become a library of any and every case that even tangentially touched the mercenary called Hawkeye. If it had bows, arrows, or the color purple, the file was in Phil’s office, even if only a fraction of them were actually related. Phil had files from the FBI, CIA, Secret Service, CISEN, CSIS, Interpol, and even weirdly one file from the NRO. On the positive side, it did seem that Hawkeye’s exploits were at least limited to the US, Canada, and Mexico.

There were a few files that Phil was sure weren’t actually Hawkeye—one because the killer had been caught red-handed and the others because they lacked Hawkeye’s trademark of arrows fletched in purple feathers. On the other hand, there were several files which clearly were the mercenary, even though no other agent had cross-referenced them back to Hawkeye. Each one was a case of an unknown assailant wearing black, a male who carried a bow and wore a quiver. One of them was even a SHIELD file. In every case, the unknown assailant seemed to defy the odds to escape, even when he seemed cornered.

The more Phil studied Hawkeye, the more impressed he became with the mercenary. It wasn’t just that Hawkeye never missed his mark—though his precision was uncanny, bordering on inhuman—it was his ability to stalk a target, infiltrate the organization if necessary to get closer to his mark, and disappear without a trace after the job was done. All with unusual methods that didn’t point to him being former military or three-letter agency. Most of SHIELD could learn a thing or two from this guy. And SHIELD could benefit from having such an asset.

Phil Coulson was going to be the man who not just caught Hawkeye, but brought him into the fold.

A sharp knock at the door pulled Phil out of the files. He had to blink to readjust his sight from the files to see Jasper Sitwell standing in the doorway holding two cups of coffee with a sheepish look on his face. “I feel like I owe you coffee,” Jasper said. “After all you wouldn’t be buried in these files if I had done my job correctly.”

“I’m always buried in files,” Phil said, though he held out his hand for the coffee. Phil never turned down a cup of coffee, and from the logo on the cups, it wasn’t the break room swill, it was the good stuff from the cafe around the corner.

“Yeah, but it’s not usually my fault.” Jasper sat down on seat across from Phil’s desk. His entire expression was contrite. “I should have been able to get him.”

“Jasper, he has given better agents than you the slip—”

“Wow. Ouch.”

Phil raised his eyebrows. “Are you really trying to claim that you’re better than Victoria Hand?”

Jasper opened his mouth, then thought the better of it, and closed it. “Fair.” He sighed and leaned back in the seat. “This guy, this Hawkeye, he’s slippery. I swear we had him and then…I swear, Phil, I swear he jumped off the building. I expected to find him as a pancake  but there wasn’t even blood and I…”

“I know, Jas, I read your report,” Phil said. It was all there. One minute the man was on the roof, the next he wasn’t, no trace of him in the alleys around the building.

“You weren’t there, that was some Batman level shit, I’m telling you, Phil. No sane person jumps off a building.”

Hawkeye was  a masked mercenary who murdered people for money. Phil wasn’t sure that was a ringing endorsement for the man’s sanity, which is why Phil knew there was a more than non-zero chance that instead of recruiting Hawkeye, he’d be putting the man down. But not every mercenary was in it for the thrill of the kill, and Phil had noticed the pattern in Hawkeye’s kills. They were all bad people: drug lords, sex traffickers, abusers. Hawkeye never took jobs that hurt innocent people. And that said there might be a shred of humanity and decency left in the assassin, and that shred might be looking for an out like SHIELD.

“He must have had some sort of exit you didn’t see,” Phil said. “Otherwise you would have seen Hawkeye splattered on the pavement.”

Jasper frowned down at his coffee cup, and Phil—despite everything—felt himself soften. Jasper was a good agent and was good at his job. While Phil’s life would be easier if Jasper had gotten the mercenary, it wasn’t Jasper’s fault that SHIELD kept going after this guy when they knew next to nothing about him. It was Phil’s number one rule: SHIELD should always go in knowing more about the situation and the players than anyone else. And Phil wasn’t going to jump headlong into this Hawkeye situation.

When Phil was ready to go after Hawkeye, he would know more about him than the mercenary knew about himself.

“Do you want to help?” Phil asked.

Jasper’s head snapped up. “Yeah. What do you need?”

Phil pushed a set of files across the desk. “Get a map. Mark the location of all these killings and sightings with the date. I want to find a pattern. I want to find his home base.”

“Okay, yeah,” Jasper said. “I can do that.” He took a large gulp of his coffee and then headed out, presumably to find a map.

This was how they were going to find Hawkeye. They weren’t going to wait for him to come to them. SHIELD was going to him.

— — —

**To: DGrayson@aol.com**  
**From: CapRogers@hotmail.com**  
 **Subject: Bad Day**  
 **Date: March 26, 2001**

I worked fourteen hours today trying to get a handle on my coworkers mess. It’s days like this where I really question what everyone else in this organization is thinking or doing.

It’s not that I think my coworkers are incompetent, because don’t get me wrong, they’re not. It’s just…sometimes I really think the only way to get something done right is to do it yourself.

Sorry this email is kind of pointless, I’m just really stressed. Hoping you’re having a better day.

— — —

**To: CapRogers@hotmail.com**  
**From: DGrayson@aol.com**  
 **Subject: Re: Bad Day**  
 **Date: March 27, 2001**

Dude, I know exactly what you mean. Sometimes I feel like I’m the only sane person in a crazy world—which is saying something because I’m probably not that sane.

I wish there was something I could do to lighten your load and brighten your day. Maybe I’ll make you a mix tape.

— — —

**To: DGrayson@aol.com**  
**From: CapRogers@hotmail.com**  
 **Subject: Re: Bad Day**  
 **Date: March 27, 2001**

A mix tape?

What songs would you put on it?

— — —

**To: CapRogers@hotmail.com**  
**From: DGrayson@aol.com**  
 **Subject: Re: Bad Day**  
 **Date: March 27, 2001**

Oh, man, asking the tough questions now!

Top ten songs to help get you out of a funk:

  1. “Here Comes the Sun” The Beatles
  2. “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” Whitney Houston
  3. “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” The Beach Boys
  4. “The Power of Love” Huey Lewis and the News
  5. “I’ll Melt with You” Modern English
  6. “Sweet Caroline” Neil Diamond
  7. “Walking On Sunshine” Katrina & the Waves
  8. “Whip It” Devo
  9. “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” Wham!



And last but not least, and I need you take me seriously on this one:

  1. “MmmBop” Hanson



— — —

**To: DGrayson@aol.com**  
**From: CapRogers@hotmail.com**  
 **Subject: Re: Bad Day**  
 **Date: March 27, 2001**

MmmBop? Are you kidding me???

— — —

**To: CapRogers@hotmail.com**  
**From: DGrayson@aol.com**  
 **Subject: Re: Bad Day**  
 **Date: March 27, 2001**

Yes, MmmBop. I dare you to listen to that song and not be happy. I dare you.

— — —

**To: DGrayson@aol.com**  
**From: CapRogers@hotmail.com**  
 **Subject: Re: Bad Day**  
 **Date: March 27, 2001**

You are ridiculous but you are also right. Listening to that song put a smile on my face. Thank you, Grayson.

— — —

**To: CapRogers@hotmail.com**  
**From: DGrayson@aol.com**  
 **Subject: Re: Bad Day**  
 **Date: March 27, 2001**

Anytime Cap.

— — —

 

Clint liked to take at least a week between jobs—longer if he could help it—time to just relax and consider his options before rushing into anything. A rushed mercenary was often a dead mercenary: stretched too thin and making stupid mistakes. Clint couldn’t afford to get sloppy. He’d learned that the hard way.

But mostly he just enjoyed a few weeks of being a normal person, not a mercenary who killed people. Instead he was just a guy who milled about town, read backlogs of comics, and maybe occasionally obsessed over why it was taking so long for CapRogers to email him back. Sometimes he felt a bit like a teenage girl waiting for a call from her boyfriend, but well, Clint didn’t have many—okay any—friends. Mercenaries didn’t have friends, only customers, competitors, and enemies.

Another lesson Clint had learned the hard way.

There was an exception, there was always an exception while Natasha Romanoff walked the earth. But Natasha was a force of nature that swept into his life in random waves. She was different, and yet there was always part of Clint that waited for the other shoe to drop, even with her. She was like a sister to him, and yet, Clint had learned from Barney that even family could not be trusted.

Small town life did help to make up for the lack. He had no friends per se in town but dozens of acquaintances, people who would smile at him and wave, or ask how things were going out on his farm. He was Frank Burton to them, a man who owned a small plot of land about an hour away from town. Everyone knew about him—but since he lived outside of town—no one really knew him. The most they might know is his love of the Internet, comic books, and his preferred snack foods.

This little town wasn’t all that different from Waverly, the town of his childhood. It was one of the reasons why Clint had chosen it. Here he didn’t have to pretend he was anything other than he was: a redneck country boy.

However, one of the perks of this town as opposed to Waverly is that it wasn’t quite so isolated. The town itself was about two hours outside of Topeka. In a half a day, Clint Barton could be a plane ride to anywhere he needed.

Today, the next town over was having their annual antique fair and while antique fairs might not be something that screamed “ruthless mercenary,” Clint loved them. The old furniture reminded him of the circus—the mismatched bed frames, rocking chairs, and dressers they managed to carry with them from show to show in people’s trailers. The homemade jams and honeys that people sold reminded him of home, and his mother making blackberry jam. And at antique fairs he occasionally found the best old comics stuff—what the owners thought was junk but to Clint was a goldmine. Even the crappy comics from the nineties were a delight to Clint, since he had missed most of the runs during that time. The circus didn’t make it easy to keep up with the latest goings-on in the DC universe.

Clint paid the five dollar parking fee and parked his bike, already excited by the pitched white tents and crowd. There was a smell of popcorn in the air, and a wave of nostalgia washed over him.

God, the only thing that would make this better if he had someone to walk through the stalls with him. Barney would have hated this and would have tainted the whole day with snide comments about how only women and queers liked antiques. Natasha would tolerate it for Clint and probably at the most feel some amusement about the whole affair. CapRogers on the other hand, Clint bet he would be thrilled, probably eagerly dragging Clint from tent to tent.

Clint smiled to himself, and headed into the grouping of tents. He couldn’t wait to find something worthy of mailing Cap.

— — —

**To: CapRogers@hotmail.com**  
**From: DGrayson@aol.com**  
 **Subject: Taste of the Country**  
 **Date: April 27, 2001**

Went to an antique fair a little ways out of the town this weekend. I don’t know if you have those in the big city—if you do it’s probably all wine tasting and craft beers. But out here, people love any excuse for a fair and I love to attend them all. Stuff my face with homemade pies or ice cream or whatever the flavor of the town is.

This town was all jam and honey, and you know, I figured a city boy like you probably never had homemade jam, made with love in someone’s Meemaw’s kitchen. Though don’t ask that Meemaw for her recipe because she might knife you. Those old broads might look sweet but they’ve got murder in their eyes.

So anyway, I got you a selection of my favorite jams and honey. Use them with your fancy tea and scones or whatever it is you city boys like.

— — —

**To: DGrayson@aol.com**  
**From: CapRogers@hotmail.com**  
 **Subject: Re: Taste of the Country**  
 **Date: April 27, 2001**

Believe it or not, country boy, there are people in the city who make homemade jams. And you think you have festivals? There isn’t a weekend in New York City where something isn’t being celebrated. Greek festivals with sweet and sticky baklava, Indian festivals with curries so spicy you can’t feel your mouth, every ethnicity, every nationality, every group they are going to have a festival and there is going to be a food that will become your new favorite.

That said I look forward to getting the jams and honey. Can’t wait to have a taste of middle America.

Also don’t talk sass about scones. You’d love my mother’s scones. They’re to die for.

— — —

 

Phil spent a month combing through files, a month following every paperwork lead he could find, and building a profile of everything he knew about the man.  But frankly it was disconcerting how little it was. He had a history of all the jobs that were definitely Hawkeye and a smaller list of jobs he suspected might be him, but as the arrow had never been found he couldn’t be sure. The earliest report that seemed to implicate Hawkeye was from 1995: the same standard MO, a mark killed by a purple fletched arrow. But there was nothing special about it, nothing any different from any of his other kills.

The letters on the page started to blur. Phil leaned back, his back protesting at the change in position. How long had he been bent over these forms? Pouring over the same pages he had read at least twice before at this point, hoping for something, anything he might have missed. But there was nothing, no hint or suggestion of Hawkeye’s real identity.

Hawkeye was good, better than half of their agents at SHIELD when it came to discretion and evasion.

There had to be something Phil was missing. Something that he should be seeing but couldn’t.

Phil needed a break. He glanced at the clock. Dammit, it was two o’clock already and he hadn’t even taken his lunch break.

Normally he’d head to the SHIELD cafeteria, but a walk around the city would do Phil some good, stretch his legs, his aching back, and maybe his mind. Help him jostle loose whatever piece he was missing. And well, if his walk about the city took him near the Post Office where he kept his PO Box for correspondence with contacts and Internet correspondences—the very PO Box that probably at this moment held a box filled with country jams—well that would just be serendipity.

It took another half an hour for Phil to actually extract himself from SHIELD. Phil Coulson couldn’t walk down the halls without another handler asking him which form was correct, or a special agent trying to lodge a complaint, or a probie timidly asking for a signature. He swore these days it took him a half an hour to make it from his own office to the break room down the hall, which was partly why Phil had bought himself a coffee pot for his own office. (The other reason was that no other agent in this God-forsaken agency could be trusted to make coffee. The swill they drank did not deserve the name coffee.)

The weather was actually pleasant, nearly seventy with a light wind. Phil almost wished he’d left his suit jacket back at his office. But the walk to the post office wasn’t that far, and there were a fair number of cafes between here and there.

The cafes outside of SHIELD were ever changing. One day it would be a deli, the next a pizza place. Or maybe it wasn’t that they changed that often, but that Phil rarely got out of SHIELD. The cafeteria burgers sufficed and were much cheaper than anything on the outside. But as he walked down the street, Phil was glad he had gotten out. It felt good to just stretch his legs and feel the sun on his face. He felt like he never saw the sun these days, getting to work before the sun went up and going home after it went down. The ergonomics group had installed sun simulating lights through much of the facilities but somehow it still just wasn’t the same as the real thing.

He doubted Grayson spent his days locked in an office, never seeing the sun. Grayson loved the outdoors and seemed unable to stay cooped up for long. It was probably why he was a freelancer of some sort (a writer maybe?), not wanting to stay tied down in any one job for a long period of time. Unlike Phil, who had signed his life away to the Army and then SHIELD. Phil had never known anything except structure, and to be honest he needed the structure. Not that he thought he’d go back to being the delinquent he’d been as a teenager if SHIELD was suddenly taken away from him, but it was all he had known in his adult life. He didn’t know who he’d be without it.

At the post office, Phil made his way around the line to his P.O. Box. He paid the extra for the large mailbox that could handle packages—since sometimes he couldn’t predict what his assets would send him—and thank goodness too, because the line was long. Inside his mailbox was a shoebox sized package—he took that back, it was actually shoe box that had been duct-taped closed. And that was just like Grayson, to use everything he had and not pay the extra for an unused box.

With how well it was taped, Phil had to use his pocket-knife to slice through the tape.

Nestled inside packing peanuts were three jars of jam—a red, a black, and a brown—and a jar of glistening golden honey. Phil smiled, pulling out the card on which there was a note in neat cramped handwriting.

“I swear I tried all the jams at the festival and these three were the best: Nanny’s raspberry Jam, Mrs. Goldsmith’s blackberry Jam, and Jam It Up!’s apple jam. All are good on some nice old fashioned toast. I’ll leave it up to you to determine if they’re good on scones. The honey is intense and amazing and you’ll never be able to eat store bought honey after you’ve had this. It’s my favorite. I stock up on it every time I see it at a festival.

I guarantee you’ll love these or your money back.”

Phil grinned at the card and then slid it into his inside jacket pocket. He’d take it home and keep it with all of his other notes from Grayson. Which sounded a little pathetic even in his own head: keeping all these notes from a man he’d never even met. Phillip J. Coulson, Agent of SHIELD, would never be so sentimental. But with Grayson, Phil wasn’t a SHIELD agent, and he could afford to give in to his more romantic sensibilities.

But not romantic like he was in love with his online pen pal. That would just be ridiculous. More romantic in a classical sense. Because Phil Coulson was a classical sort of guy. Or so he told himself.

Jams and honey acquired, Phil headed back into the street. He could head back towards SHIELD and the delis, pizza places, and overpriced burgers, or he could keep walking and take a chance further down the street. Maybe try something new.

That’s probably what Grayson would do—wander until he found some sort of hidden treasure. And it wasn’t like Phil couldn’t afford a long lunch break. Fury was always telling him he didn’t take enough time to himself.

Package under one arm, Phil strolled down the street, taking in his options: Greek, Indian, a deli, another pizza place, another burger joint, Thai, and well, hello what was this? Three blocks from the post office was a themed restaurant—the sort that Phil normally avoided, because they tended to use their over the top decor to hide the fact their food was sub-par. “The Big Top” the sign proclaimed, in a lurid yellow on top of royal blue.

Grayson loved the circus—another aspect of his love of Dick Grayson, Phil had always supposed. But standing in here in the street, holding a packaged from the man, Phil felt like he had no choice. He had to eat at this themed restaurant. It was the exact sort of place Grayson would choose. Or so Phil thought.

The inside of the restaurant was a riot of color. Each table seemed to have a different vibrantly colored table cloth. The walls were plastered with posters advertising shows everything from a Bearded Lady and Strongman to the Magnificent Marvelous Mike! (It looked like some sort of magic show from the poster). The posters even had an authentic feel to them, as if they had been rolled up and taken down in cities across the nation advertising this chaotic traveling circus.

“Hello!” A hostess dressed as a ringmaster greeted Phil. “Welcome to the Big Top! How many in your party?”

“Just me,” Phil said politely. It wasn’t that unusual in New York, for a person to be eating alone.

“Table or bar?”

Phil looked across the room to the bar, debating sitting alone at a table or sitting at the bar—he found both situations awkward to be truthful—when a lurid purple poster just to the right of the bar caught his eye. The poster was practically neon purple, featuring a masked man in a deep purple costume in a position that made it look like he was falling from a great height, shooting a bow. In bold black letters the poster proclaimed “THE AMAZING HAWKEYE!”

“Sir, excuse me!” The hostess jogged to catch up with him—Phil hadn’t even realized he’d crossed the room, now standing directly in front of the poster. “Can I help you?”

“This poster,” Phil said, halting himself before reaching out to touch it. “The Amazing Hawkeye. Is this…did this come from a real circus?”

“All of our posters come from real circuses!” the hostess replied. “We pride ourselves in our authentic—”

“How much?” Phil said.

“What?”

“How much for the poster?” Phil demanded.

Her eyes went wide and uncertain. “Umm, sir, we don’t sell decor, we…”

Phil pulled out his wallet, his eyes never leaving the poster. “I will give you $200 right now if I can have this poster.”

“Letmegetthemanager,” the girl managed to say before disappearing from his side. Phil didn’t move, his eyes devouring the poster in case the manager wouldn’t let him take it. He needed to memorize every aspect.

It was too much of a coincidence. A man in purple with a bow from a circus calling himself the Amazing Hawkeye? Phil couldn’t tell how old the poster is, but something was clear. Either this was his mercenary or the mercenary had patterned himself off of this circus act. Either way this was the first big break Phil had had in over a month.

In smaller letters at the bottom of the poster were the words “Only at Carson’s Circus!”

The Amazing Hawkeye. Carson’s Circus. Phil felt a grin take over his face.

“Got you.”

— — —

**To: DGrayson@aol.com**  
**From: CapRogers@hotmail.com**  
 **Subject: Breakthrough**  
 **Date: April 28, 2001**

I got the jams and honey safely! Even went by the bakery on my way home so I could get some bread worthy of such deliciousness. I look forward to having jam and toast for breakfast in the morning.

Completely unrelated, I had a major breakthrough on this client I’ve been working on—the case that’s been driving me insane for the past month. So I just wanted to give you a heads up that I may completely disappear off the internet and may even have to travel out to see the client unexpectedly. So if I disappear for a bit, don’t worry about me! I’m just finally getting this whole disaster of a situation cleaned up!

And really, thank you for the jams. They made my week.

— — —

**To: CapRogers@hotmail.com**  
**From: DGrayson@aol.com**  
 **Subject: Re: Breakthrough**  
 **Date: April 28, 2001**

Awesome! I’m glad you like them!

And congrats on your big break! I know how this client’s been like awful. I hope you mop up the whole situation and then rub it in the face of the coworker who made it a disaster. You’ve got this!

And if I’m not back when you get back it’s probably because I’ve gotten another gig. I’m getting a little restless so I’m looking for another freelance job, and so I’ll probably be on the road by the time you get back!

Enjoy the jams and the sweet victory of success!

— — —

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You too can enjoy [Clint's Good Mood Playlist!](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMZUgHjmje0nrVBb9GxktvmjKk-Xke0zO)
> 
> As usual you can find on tumblr at [the-feels-assassin](https://the-feels-assassin.tumblr.com/)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint has a visitor. Phil has some time to kill.

When Clint came home and found a redhead siting at his kitchen table, he proceeded to ignore her and instead unpacked his groceries. He didn’t want to let his ice cream melt just because a beautiful woman broke into his house. Again.

“What’s for dinner?” Natasha Romanoff asked, looking up from the papers spread across the table.

“ _I’m_ having chicken fajitas,” Clint responded.

The Black Widow pouted, her delicate red eyebrows raising ever so slightly, her blue eyes widening innocently, her lower lip quivering. Clint sighed. She was such an actress, but he couldn’t resist that face.

“Fine,” he said. “ _We’re_ having chicken fajitas.” She rewarded him with a brilliant smile, before her face fell back into its normal passive demeanor. “But if you’re going to eat, you better help. There are some vegetables that need to be chopped.”

She rose to her feet fluidly, tidying up the papers and photos that were spread across the table into a manila folder. It was undoubtedly a job—Natasha always showed up with a job—but she wouldn’t broach the topic until after dinner. The kind of jobs Natasha brought, they were well worth doing, but definitely an after-dinner sort of conversation.

They worked together as well in the kitchen as they worked in the field, moving around each other almost instinctually, each taking the task they were best suited for. Natasha was an expert with a knife—whether flaying a man or slicing vegetables. While she chopped, Clint seasoned and cooked the meat.

Soon enough they settled into the table with a meal for two and a couple of beers. Natasha preferred wine but didn’t trust Clint’s taste. Which to be honest, was fair.

“So how’s the mystery pen pal?”

“Why is that always the first question?” Clint asked. “Never ‘how are you doing Clint?’ or ‘excellent cooking, Clint.’ It’s like you only hang out with me for news about Cap.”

“I know how you are,” Natasha said, waving her fork at him. “You’re always the same. A walking disaster.”

“Wow, thanks, Nat. You surely know how to lift a guy up.”

She shrugged. “You do cook a mean fajita though. But seriously, how is the pen pal?”

“He’s fine,” Clint said. “I sent him some jam. He liked them.”

A smile touched her face. “Jams. That’s cute. You’re cute, Clint.”

Clint scowled at her. He was not “cute.” He was a battle-hardened assassin, who literally killed people in cold-blood. He was not cute.

She laughed at his expression and pointed her fork directly at his face. “Cute. I stand by that.”

Dinner continued in this manner—light conversation always staying far away from their work and edging around the fact of their lives. They didn’t always tell each other the details—Clint thought Natasha would die before giving up her personal address to him—but they always told each other the truth. Mercenaries don’t trust and they don’t have friends, but well, Clint had Natasha who was not a friend exactly. She was like a fairy godmother and big sister wrapped into one, who had appeared one day, saving his life during a job gone terribly wrong, and for some reason never left. Clint didn’t know what he had done to deserve the attention of a  legendary, defected Russian operative. He doubted he should trust her, but he couldn’t help it. Not when she gave him that pixie like grin and teased him like a little brother. Not when she had held his guts in with her bare hands.

Eventually dinner was over. Clint started washing the dishes while Natasha dried. She bumped her hip into his. “Tell me what’s bothering you, _vorobushek_.”

“Hawk, not sparrow,” he protested the nickname. He was _Hawk_ eye, not “little sparrow.” It was one of the first things he had looked up once he had gotten Internet access, wanting to know what Natasha had been calling him all these years. He had been frustrated to learn it was a term of endearment Russians often used on their children. He was not a child! He was an assassin for goodness sake! “And anyway, it’s work related.”

She shrugged. “We’re done eating. Tell me what it is.”

“Some organization is after me,” Clint admitted. “I don’t know who they are. I assume government. I assume American. They keep showing up. At first, I thought they were there for the guys who hired me, but now they’ve showed up on three of my jobs, Nat. And on the last one, they ignored the rest of the mercs and solely focused on me. They’re after me. And…” And he was scared. But he couldn’t say that.

Clint knew his life would end in death or jail—if he was lucky. But it wasn’t an end he was looking forward to. Clint had barely had any sort of life to speak of, and the life he had was misery. But still, he didn’t want to die.

“And it’s not FBI?” Natasha finished drying the last dish, setting it down gently in the cabinet.

“Not FBI. Not CIA. Not local cops. I don’t know who they are. They’ve got top of the line gear, no emblems, they’re organized. And they just keep showing up. Domestic _and_ international.”

Natasha’s face went cold. “SHIELD.”

“Who?”

She looked at him, his eyes scanning him up and down. “I’m afraid you’re on a much higher radar than FBI or CIA, Clint. And they’re not just someone you’re going to be able to shake. Not without being extremely careful.”

Clint grimaced. Careful wasn’t exactly his middle name. “Okay. But who are they?”

“We’re going to want to sit down for this,” Natasha replied. “And maybe another beer.”

#

 

Four beers later, Clint leaned forward and put his head in his hands. “I’m so fucked.”

“If I can escape the Soviet Union, you can escape this,” Natasha said. She hesitated. “If that’s what you want.”

“If? _If_ that’s what I want?” Clint looked up at her in surprise. “You just told me it’s a world-wide organization, run by some like Allied shadow government? That the have reach across the globe, unlimited resources, and like the Terminator they will never stop. No, you’re right, Nat. I want to be disappeared by a shadow government, never to see the light of day ever again.”

“That wasn’t the only option.”

“Right. The other option is they’re so impressed with me that they try to recruit me. So instead of being in charge of my own destiny, it’ll be Trick Shot and the circus all over again, except since they’re a shadow organization instead of leaving me for dead in the end, they’ll just kill me when they’re done with me.” God, he couldn’t do that again. Being a mercenary was bad, but at least he got to choose his own jobs. He could make sure he only hurt people that deserved it—druglords, mobsters, human traffickers. Even if most of the time, he was hired by one mobster to hurt another mobster. Right now, Clint could walk away from any job if it seemed wrong. He had thrown money back into people’s faces when it turned out they wanted him to kill innocents or traffic people himself. There were some lines Clint wouldn’t cross and right now, he was in charge of determining those lines and whether he crossed them.

That would all change if he had a boss, someone else calling the shots. Just like Trick. Clint would just be a weapon that they pointed, and if he baulked, well, one did not keep a weapon that didn’t shoot when you told it to.

Fuck. Clint was so fucked.

“Well, one way to stop that from happening is to stay off their radar,” Natasha said. “From what you’ve told me, they’ve only come after you when you’ve taken jobs for large organizations. It seems likely to me they have contacts or moles inside those organizations reporting back to them. You need to lay low and take small jobs for a while.”

Clint shot her a sidelong look. “And you have just such a job for me, don’t you?”

“Of course, it’s why I came,” Natasha said. “I need backup on my next job.” She hesitated. “But if you’d rather lay low. I can do it by myself.”

“Fuck, no, I’m not letting you go by yourself,” he said. “What’s the job. Tell me about it.”

She handed him the manila envelope. Clint flipped it open, and with the first picture his stomach turned in disgust. He knew what it would be. It always was, with the job’s Natasha brought: human traffickers, specializing in the sex trade, usually little girls.

The entire intelligence world had trembled in fear the day the Black Widow had declared herself a free agent. No one had known what she was going to do. Sell Russian secrets? Kill everyone who had been in her chain of command? Or maybe her defection was a ruse, and she would try to become a double agent. Clint was sure no one had called that she would become a one woman army against human traffickers, freeing girls whenever and wherever she could across the globe.

She had told Clint once she would never, as long as she was alive, let one single girl repeat even a moment of her own life. She would spend the rest of her days freeing them all. And well, that was a cause Clint could get behind. So anytime Natasha asked for his help, he was on-board.

Some things were just the right thing to do.

— — —

 **To: CapRogers@hotmail.com**  
**From: DGrayson@aol.com**  
 **Subject: Re: Breakthrough**  
 **Date: April 30, 2001**

And I got a new gig! Not expecting a response from you, because I know you’re busy, but just wanted to let you know, you probably won’t hear from me for two more weeks. Hope your work with this client is going well!

— — —

 

SHIELD’s Research Librarians were the best at what they did. They could work magic with a microfiche, sweet talk the grouchiest academic, and decipher any language or code. If SHIELD’s librarians couldn’t find something, it did not exist. Until Phil’s request to research Carson’s Circus in the context of Hawkeye, they had been unable to turn anything up on the man—which they had taken as a personal affront. So when Phil had handed the head of the Research Library, Agent Mendez, the amazing Hawkeye poster, the woman had practically vibrated with glee. “We’ll get you something in three days, Coulson. I swear it.”

Three days or it didn’t exist, that was the Research Library’s motto. They couldn’t promise everything in three days, but they could get more than enough for an agent to get started on their case. In the grand scheme of things, three days was not very long at all, and Phil rarely begrudged the librarians the time they needed to produce their unimpeachable results. But this time, three days felt like an eternity. There was literally nothing Phil could do—other than pour over the files he had read a million times before—until the librarians got back with his research.

Three days. What was Phil going to do for three days? Fury would probably order him to take some down time for himself, but Phil was too on-edge in regards to this case. If he went home, he would just feel like he was wasting time. He needed something or someone to distract him from the Hawkeye case. And his go-to option—Grayson—wasn’t available.

And wasn’t that just life. Whenever Phil Coulson had a moment to himself or time off, there was never anyone to enjoy it with. Melinda May and John Garrett were on an ops—though not together, dear God, those two could not work together. Phil had learned that early in his academy days. There was always Jasper, but at this point hanging out with Jasper wouldn’t get his mind off of Hawkeye. Jasper hadn’t been able to let his failure go and brought it up every time he saw Phil. Jasper needed a vacation, and Phil realized that was the pot calling the kettle black, but the agent wouldn’t be able to move on until Hawkeye was caught.

Well, it had been a while since he had been to the comic book store. And he could slip a couple in his briefcase to take on the op on him, in case there were moments where he was stuck in a hotel room where he had nothing to do.

Phil neatened up his desk, shut-down his computer and soon enough found himself on the streets of New York, walking to his usual comic book store. It wasn’t the biggest comic book store in New York City or the even the one with the best selection. It wasn’t even the comic book store he worked with on finding rare and valuable comics.  But this store would hold his pull list books for an indefinite period of time, and they knew exactly what Phil liked. So if anything new that was up Phil’s alley came out, they would automatically put it in his box even if he hadn’t requested it.

The bell rang as Phil opened the door of the store. An employee’s head popped up from over the edge of the counter. Her name was Suzie, and she was one of the full-time employees, thank goodness, because the newbies and part timers never recognized Phil. “Phil!” she said. “It’s been a hot minute. How are you doing, man?”

“I’m fine, anything new come out that I should be interested in?”

“Is there ever!” she said. “I’ve put a couple of interesting things in your box in the past couple of months but the one I’m most excited about is the new Harley Quinn standalone. Also _Lucifer_ is still fucking excellent, so you’re going to enjoy catching up on that. I’ll go get your books.” She disappeared into the back, leaving Phil to peruse the wall of comics.

He wished he could do this with Grayson. It was a silly and impossible wish, but he wanted to hear the other man’s opinions in the moment: what comics was he reading right now, whose art work was he loving and whose did he think was ridiculous, which new characters he thought would last and which would fall into obscurity. Phil didn’t have very many friends he could talk comic books with. Melinda thought comics were for children and tended to focus her reading on non-fiction. Phil had never actually witnessed John read anything that wasn’t required for work or a cover. Sitwell at least was a big science fiction and fantasy nut, so Phil had someone to talk _Wheel of Time_ and _A Song of Ice and Fire_ with, but Phil had never been able to get him into comics. The lack of comic-nerd friends was what had driven Phil online in the first place, to find someone, anyone, to talk comic books with. He hadn’t expected to find someone as kindred a spirit as Grayson.

“Jesus, Phil, when was the last time you were here?” Suzie came back lugging at least six months worth of comics. “We should be making you pay rent at this rate.”

“You know I would, if you guys needed it to hold my place,” Phil said, meeting her at the counter.

She shot Phil a look, since she had obviously meant it as a joke and here he was taking it seriously. But Phil was serious. He appreciated this store, and if they required a nominal fee to keep his box open, he would pay it. “Well, you’ve got a lot of reading ahead of you, and since it’s been so long since I’ve last seen you, I want to make sure you keep reading. You didn’t miss the last _A Song of Ice and Fire_ book did you? _A Storm of Swords?_ Came out last November.”

“I did remember to pick that one up,” Phil said. “But what other good books are you reading these days, Suzie?”

She chattered easily as she counted through his comics and rang them up. “You’ve got to check out this new series—it just started last year and already two books out. _The Dresden Files_. It’s a hardboiled PI book set in Chicago except the PI is a wizard, and I’m telling you, Phil, the voice in this book. It’s amazing. Can’t wait to see where this series goes. And of course speaking of wizards, you’re already reading Harry Potter right?”

“Harry Potter?” Phil repeated the name. It sounded vaguely familiar but he could not quite place the series. “No? Should I be?”

“You’re going to think I’m insane,” she said, “because it’s a kids’ series, but Phil, I’m telling you it’s amazing. My niece turned me on to it after the fourth book came out last summer and after the first two books I was sort of meh, but let me tell you, the third and fourth book kick the whole series up a notch. You have got to read it. All of the kids are raving about it and it’s so big they’re making a movie of the first book, coming out in November of this year.”

“Well I always do like to read the book before I see the movie,” Phil admitted. “I’ll have to check it out.”

“I promise you won’t regret it,” she said, flashing him a smile. Then she told him his total that was in the hundreds of dollars, which was unsurprising when it was six months of issues. He had a lot of reading to do.

— — — 

 **To: DGrayson@aol.com**  
**From: CapRogers@hotmail.com**  
 **Subject: Harry Potter**  
 **Date: May 2, 2001**

I hope your gig is going successfully! I thought I’d be very busy right now, but I ended up with three days of downtime while waiting for a response from another department. It’s killing me because I feel like I’m so close to a breakthrough with this client. Patience is part of the business, and if you asked my coworkers I’m sure they would say I’m a master of patience. However, the truth is I feel like my entire skin is itching. I need to do something. I need to keep busy, and this waiting around is killing me.

I figured I would catch up on reading while I waited, and someone recently recommended a kids’ series to me: Harry Potter. Have you heard of it? I was thinking it would be a light read that might help distract me, though honestly I wasn’t very hopeful based on the covers. (I know, never judge a book by its cover, but I can’t help it). Grayson, I was so wrong. These books! The first one felt very Roald Dahl to me, which perhaps is just the British-ness of it all, and I enjoyed it but it didn’t change my world. However, I was intrigued so I kept reading. By the time I got to the third book, I was a goner: hook, line, and sinker. You have to read these books, Grayson! I need someone to talk to them about! Or if you’ve already read them let me know, because I need to find someone to talk about the end of the fourth book with.

Maybe after this gig is over you’ll have some downtime as well. And if so, I’m highly recommending this series.

But my downtime is actually coming to an end. I’m waiting for a flight for a work trip as I type this, and I’m not quite sure how long this one will last, but I will message you as soon as I’m able.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As usual you can find me on [tumblr](https://the-feels-assassin.tumblr.com/).


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint wraps up his job with Natasha, while Phil closes in on Hawkeye.

At the end of this job, Natasha and Clint had killed an entire gang of human traffickers and rescued five girls—ranging from ages five to nine. Natasha always ended these jobs the same way. She didn’t trust local authorities, so she never called the police or dropped them off the local station. She took each girl home personally. Whatever money they found on the traffickers, Natasha would split between herself, Clint, and the girls they found. (The money never really covered the cost of Clint’s time, but some things were always worth more than the money. Clint never begrudged that he got a lesser cut then the girls did, and he knew Natasha often didn’t take anything for herself).

They were dropping off the last girl now, the nine-year-old. The girl was quiet in the back seat of the car, even as they pulled up in front of her house. Natasha got out of the car and opened the door for the girl, squatting down to be eye level before letting her out of the car. “It’s going to be okay now,” Natasha said quietly, as she always did. “It will not be like it was before and it will be hard to go back to normal life, but you can do this. You are strong.”

Natasha gave the girl the roll of money and a card with a phone number. “Memorize this number,” she said, “so no one can ever take it from you. And if anything like this ever happens again, you call this number, and I will come for you. Do you understand?”

The girl nodded, still quiet, and took the money and card. Natasha then stood, getting out of her way. “Go home now, dear,” Natasha said. “We’ll make sure you get there safe.”

As the girl got out of the car and made her way to the front door, Natasha got back in the car. They always watched until the parents or grandparents or whoever it was that was the girl’s family came to the door. They stayed to see the initial exclamation and tears, but they never stayed long enough to be noticed. By the time the tears and hugs subsided Clint had driven on.

It was hard but rewarding work, and Clint was always glad to do it.

Natasha was always quiet immediately after these missions, which Clint could understand. He wondered if it made her think of her own past, what it would have been like if there had been a Black Widow and Hawkeye to save her from the Red Room. Clint often wondered the same about his past. And to be honest, it usually made him feel like he was failing his past self. There had to be more he could be doing to help boys like him—boys lost in the system, unloved because no one wanted a half-grown, broken boy instead of a sweet, innocent baby. But Clint had never been kidnapped, there was no mafia he could go after to save himself. No, Clint had been betrayed over and over by his own family. And Clint didn’t know how to save people from their own family.

They ended up at Denny’s; they always did after jobs in the US. Natasha ordered the chocolate chip pancakes and chocolate milk, while Clint got the Grand Slam and coffee. Something about killing a bunch of human traffickers made Clint famished. Natasha always stole a couple of his pieces of bacon and a few bites of eggs, and Clint always took a couple of sips of her chocolate milk. It was nice, especially when Natasha would purposefully get a milk mustache and make funny faces at him. In his moments like this with Natasha, the two of them in a booth, joking and eating off each other’s plates, Clint wondered if this was what having a sister was like.

The Black Widow might not be a traditional sister, but well, she was better than any of the traditional family he ever had.

“So what are you going to do next?” Natasha asked, casually. Too casually.

“Lay low, just like we discussed, Nat,” Clint said. If she was a sister she was probably an over-protective big sister, even if by looks Clint was pretty sure he was the older of the two. “I’m not crazy. I don’t want this SHIELD or whatever to get their claws in me.”

She nodded. “If you need help…”

“Nah, I’ve got it,” Clint said more confidence than he felt. “I’ll hole up in my house a couple of days, reading comics, and playing around on the internet. You know me. Low key is my middle name.”

Natasha snorted indelicately, giving him one of her knowing looks and then took another swig of her chocolate milk. Clint stole a bite of her chocolate chip pancake and smiled. SHIELD may be a nightmare breathing down his neck but right now, he was here with Natasha eating breakfast, and that was as close to good as it got.

And well, he was sort of looking forward to a few days of just him, the Internet, and hopefully Cap. If Clint was lucky, Cap would be free of his work problems, and they’d be able to shoot emails back and forth. Those were always Clint’s favorite moments, when the two of them happened to be on the computer at the same time, responding to emails almost as soon as they got them. In those moments it was like they were actually hanging out in person. And while Clint knew it was impossible, he knew it could never happen for so many reasons—most having to do with his own career choices—it was Clint’s most crazy dream. He wanted to be able to sit in a Denny’s with Cap, trading jokes and fries.

Clint wanted to talk to Cap, really talk to him. He wanted to hear his voice, to learn its cadence; he didn’t even care if it was too high or nasally, he just wanted to hear it. He wanted to watch his lips move, to see how he enunciated his words. God, he bet once Cap learned Clint was hard of hearing that Cap would be so fucking careful, making sure he had Clint’s attention before speaking and over enunciating just so Clint catch his words even without his aids. Even Natasha forgot to do that sometimes, forgot that it was easier even with the aids in to see her lips. Cap wouldn’t forget. He was always remembered everything Clint told him—even when it was the most bizarre or random factoid.

But it would never happen. Clint would never sit in a booth like this across from Cap. He had come to terms with that long ago. But with a few days off, he could dream. For a few days, in the quiet of the library, he could pretend he was just a comic book nerd and not a mercenary. Whether Natasha believed it or not, Clint was completely capable of lying low, because lying low meant Cap, and that was always something to look forward to.

 

#

 

If Phil Coulson was going to be honest, the dossier SHIELD’s Research Librarian had provided him on Hawkeye was the strangest thing he had ever read outside of a comic book. In fact, it was so similar to a comic book origin story, that it took Phil a moment to reassure himself that he had not in fact read it before.

Hawkeye was born Clinton Francis Barton in Waverly, Iowa to Harold and Edith Barton. He was their second son. When Barton was five years old, his parents died in a car accident. Research had provided a photo copy of the article run in the local Waverly paper. Barton’s father had been driving drunk and had run headlong into a utility pole, killing himself and his wife. The two boys had been shipped off to foster care. The county foster care records were spotty at best—Research had been unable to confirm his first two locations—but it seemed in the end the boys had ended up in a group home when Barton was around ten. The county records stopped there, but they also had no indication that the boys aged out of the system or were placed in a more permanent home.

Research hadn’t been able to put together an exact timeline for when Barton ended up with Carson’s Circus, just that he had started performing around age fifteen. It left a bitter taste in Phil’s mouth that a local foster system could just lose a boy like this and not even record it. Had Barton run away? Had he been kidnapped? Had the foster system even tried to look for him? Or was he just another boy shuffled around that they would rather quietly pretend never existed?

This was how villains were born, by quiet acts of apathy.

Barton had been an act with the circus for three years but then his circus career suddenly ended. Research had found a hospital record for a seventeen-year-old John Doe admitted to a hospital matching Barton’s description, beaten within an inch of his life. The doctors had not been sure he would survive. And just when he was on the mend, the boy disappeared from the hospital. Coincidentally—or not in Phil’s opinion—the boy disappeared the day after the county sent a social worker to interview him.

For a year there were no more records, and then reports of a criminal using a bow and arrow started popping up on local radars. Mostly these early crimes seemed to be burglaries and thefts, which made sense for a teenager with nothing. And then, in 1994 came the first case of a Hawkeye assassination. The boy would have been twenty, not even old enough to drink but old enough to take down a Chicago mobster.

Barton seemed to be completely self-taught. Not a former asset of any agency, just a man with an unusual skillset. The circus upbringing could certainly explain his ability to suddenly disappear into nowhere—acrobatic training or something similar—almost like a villainous Dick Grayson.

Which really made Phil want to tell _his_ Grayson about Barton. He wondered what Grayson would think of the mercenary. Both Grayson and Barton had lost their parents at a young age and both had ended up in the foster system, and yet from there their lives diverged. Where Barton’s path had gone dark, Grayson’s had found hope and family. Grayson had gushed to Phil several times about the woman who had come into his life and become like a sister to him, how she had helped him on his path. It was amazing what difference even have just one person in your corner could make.

Phil wished he could have Grayson’s eyes on this case, to get his particular wisdom and wit. He wondered what Grayson would think of Barton, what Grayson would see when he looked at him. A civilian like Grayson might just see a murderer, but Phil hoped Grayson would see what Phil saw: a potential hero.

Because that was what Barton could be, what Phil hoped he would be. This didn’t have to be the end of Hawkeye. It could be a beginning.

Phil had seen first hand how bad circumstances could lead people to desperate lives, and it seemed Barton’s life had been one bad circumstance after another. It was not shocking that a boy overlooked and betrayed by the system would use whatever skills he had to survive, even when they were unsavory.

And there was still the fact that Hawkeye never killed an innocent. Even the cases where it seemed like some random civilian was killed by him, with a little digging it was always discovered that the man was abusing his wife, secretly working for a cartel, or deep in the pockets of one mafia or another. Everything was pointing towards Barton being the perfect candidate for recruitment. If SHIELD extended their hand, if SHIELD gave him an opportunity to turn his life around, this man might just take it.

All in all, these were the earliest records Phil had seen before, but with this background information, Research was able to pull together more than Phil had imagined: links to bank accounts, tax records, rental agreements, and credit cards. Everyone left a digital trail, even Hawkeye.

Which is how Phil Coulson was able to be in a small town past Topeka, Kansas with SHIELD’s premier Strike Team, staking out the home of one “Frank Burton”.

This was the end of the road for the Amazing Hawkeye.

Or it would have been, if Hawkeye had been home. Phil had the strike team watching the house and town for two days before they made the call that Barton wasn’t home.

Spending days in a van with Jasper Sitwell was not exactly Phil’s idea of a good time, especially not when Jasper was on edge. But Phil was practiced at stakeouts, observing the town and the house, waiting for anything unusual. The van was actually in town—it would be too conspicuous outside of Barton’s home in the middle of nowhere. But the team had set up cameras discreetly about the house, and all of their feeds were piped back to this van.

As Phil watched the lazy town, he found his mind drifting back to Grayson. He wondered if this was the sort of country town his friend lived in. Out here in the flats of Kansas, there was land as far as the eye could see. He bet Grayson loved this sort of openness. He could just imagine Grayson walking through town, not in a hurry like a New Yorker, but lackadaisically, stopping to chat with every person he passed.

Phil bet Grayson knew ever single person in his town, was probably even friends with them all. And how could the town not love him in return? His charm, his humor, his wit, his infectious love of the countryside and random small town fairs—Grayson probably had his whole town eating out of his hand.

And Phil bet this town had a killer fair. He wondered if this was a jam and honey town or a corn-maze and pumpkin patch town. If this op went bust, maybe Phil could spend a few days wandering about, find some perfect taste of this part of the country to send to Grayson.

“Ugh.” Jasper knocked Phil out of his thoughts by banging his head loudly against his console. “Where is this motherfucker?”

“He’s probably on a job,” Phil said, absently munching on a powdered donut. Maybe this was a pie town—Phil could definitely be down for trying some pie. “But he’ll come home eventually, Jasper. They always do.”

 

# 

 

Clint rode his bike into town. The job hadn’t been that far away, no plane tickets necessary this time. Just a ride through the open country of middle America. Clint appreciated the quiet of the road, nothing but the wind, the radio, and the occasional smell of cows. No people with expectations, no government organizations hunting him, no lies, just Clint Barton and his bike and the road.

That said, he was glad to see the outskirts of the small town, it’s familiar buildings and people. His life in town might be a small life built on lies, but it was a life. And it was the closest to home Clint had in a long time. As the few buildings of main streets appeared, his shoulders relaxed.

There was Old Man Carpenter, doing his afternoon constitutional to the Post Office to check his box. A group of moms and one dad—Robert O’Mallory who worked from home, quite the local target of gossip—loitering outside of the elementary school as they waited for the kids to be released. The man who ran the hardware store was out in front, chatting it up with the owner of the florist’s next door. Everything here was always the same. Always on schedule and how it was meant to be, short of some local gossip that the librarians were always willing to let Clint in on. The town had a rhythm, one Clint knew well.

A rhythm that did not include the van parked on Main and 1st.

Clint didn’t slow down as he went by it, but they didn’t call him Hawkeye for nothing. He noticed its marking, it’s plates. It claimed to be a plumber’s van, but Clint knew the local plumber—Vince Howard—and this van was not his.

If it had been just the van, Clint might have let it slide. But now that he was looking, he saw the strange couple sitting outside of the coffee shop, the electrical company man in the cherry picker working on a transformer, and the shadow of a sniper on the roof of the hardware store.

And well, that was just offensive. A sniper should never be seen, not even a shadow. Clint would’ve thought that after giving SHIELD the slip three different times they’d at least send the A team after him instead of a useless rooftop sniper who should have taken him out a hundred yards back and a van so out of place that even Old Man Carpenter was looking at it shiftily.

But on the other hand, he’d count his blessings. They may have fucking found his home base, but they still hadn’t fucking caught him.

And they never would. Not if Clint could help it.

#

The sniper on the roof called out the motorcycle first. Phil pulled up the cameras to focus in. He couldn’t tell if it was Hawkeye—not with the helmet and bulky leather jacket—but it was the first stranger to town they’d seen in the five days they’d been camping out. Nothing went unnoticed in a small town, which was why Phil was assuming that if this was Hawkeye, they’d already been noticed. “Do not let him out of your sights,” Phil ordered.

“Yes, sir.”

#

Clint had a choice. Try to ditch them in town or go home. Undoubtedly they were at his house, had it staked out, and would jump the moment he even approached it. But the house was his own turf, and there were no random civilians there. He really didn’t want the elementary school kids who were just now getting out, Debbie the librarian, or even Old Man Carpenter to get hit in the crossfire meant for him.

He took second street out of town, opposite direction of his house. Maybe they would think it wasn’t him. And well, they were in the middle of nowhere Kansas. He supposed there were more choices than just home or town. Because if Old Man Carpenter was here, that meant he wasn’t at home. And Clint could use that.

#

“Where is he going?” Jasper asked, watching the cameras.

“I don’t know,” Phil admitted. “But we’re following him. Strike Team Alpha, stay at the house. Strike Team Bravo, stay in town. Charlie, we’re following the mark.”

#

Old Man Carpenter lived on a farm quite near to town—he claimed his farm had existed before the town, so it was not him who lived close to town but town that lived close to the farm. He was usually pretty grumpy when he said it, as if he had never intended to live so close to civilization.

Clint avoided the house proper, instead riding straight up to the barn. Let them know where he went. He wanted them to follow him.

#

“This is a set up,” Jasper said, as they watched Strike Team Charlie’s cameras. The bike was obviously ditched out front, the doors to the barn invitingly open.

“Obviously,” Phil said. “But we’re still going to take the bait. But not yet. He’s not going anywhere just yet. Let’s make him sweat a bit.”

#

It took so long that at first Clint wasn’t sure they were actually going to follow him. For a solid five minutes he genuinely wondered if they were so incompetent that they hadn’t taken the bait. Maybe Natasha had been wrong, and it wasn’t SHIELD at all, but a bunch of amateurs.

Then a man clad in SWAT gear pushed open the door to the barn, and well, Clint should have known better than to think Natasha was wrong.

He watched from his perch in the hay loft, partially buried in the hay. He just needed them all to come in, as many as there were, into his trap.

Three of them entered, two from the front, and Clint heard the one come in through the back door. They were sweeping the bottom floor looking for him. _Come a little bit closer,_ Clint thought. _Just a little bit more._

The three of them formed a triangle just under Clint, and almost as one, their guns pointed upward, realizing he must be above them.

Bingo.

Clint hit the button to turn off his hearing aids and lobbed a flash-bang straight down at them. He closed his eyes until he felt the heat of it die down, then he flicked his aids back on, and jumped down out of the hayloft, straight onto one of the fumbling agents.

The agent crumpled beneath him like a rag doll. The other two agents were still staggering, disoriented by the flash-bang, and _shit_! Some of the hay was on fire. Old Man Carpenter was going to kill him. Clint grabbed one of the SHIELD agents and pushed him into the small fire, effectively smothering it with the man’s body. The third agent was trying to track Clint with his rifle, but still didn’t seem to be recovered from the flash bang. Clint pulled out his knife and then hesitated. He really didn’t want to leave behind any dead government agents. That was how you got an agency to never, ever forget you existed. Once you killed one of them, they would never stop until they found you.

Instead he kicked the man in the balls (low blow, he knew, but a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do). He then pulled the cuffs of the agent’s own belt and cuffed him.

The agent in the fire was still struggling—though it seemed throwing him had caused him to completely lose his balance as well as not be able to see or hear. There was some rope nearby, so Clint grabbed it and tied the three agents together. That would keep them for a hot second.

Three down, but Clint didn’t know how many more of them would be out there. He doubted SHIELD would only send three agents after him, especially after everything they’d done on the last ops. No, Clint needed an escape plan. He needed someway to get away from here without them noticing. But fucking how?

He stared at the three agents. They were literally walking arsenals. He grabbed an item off of one of the guy’s belts. Tear gas. He could work with this.

#

The agent’s cameras went blind with the flash-bang. “Well, shit,” Jasper said. “Who carries a flash-bang on themselves?”

Mercenaries who were being hunted, that was who. “Strike Team Bravo, we may need backup,” Phil radioed. He looked up the van to the driver. “How close are we?”

“We’re pulling up at the farm now, sir.”

Smoke was pouring out of the barn. “Charlie, what’s your status?”

The line crackled, and a voice came through distorted. Probably damaged by the flash bang. “…subdued….tear….” Tear gas. Well that explained the smoke.

An agent stumbled out of the barn, patting at the back of his tac suit which seemed to be smoking. He actually dropped down to the ground and started rolling to put out the flames that may have been there.

“Agent Matthews, are you okay?” Phil asked.

The man stopped rolling, sat up, and seemed to take stock of his situation. His mask covered the majority of his face, which as close to the barn as he was, he probably still needed. “Good…ir.”

“You better get in the van, let Sitwell check your burns,” Phil said. He opened the doors of the van and jumped out.

Matthews stood up, and Phil pulled out his gun and shot him.

#

Clint saw the gun too late. His left leg gave out beneath him. “ _Motherfucker!”_

“Not usually,” the calm voice from the radio said. Clint was down on his right knee, struggling not to black out, but he managed to focus on the man who had stepped out of the van. He looked like someone’s accountant, out for a stroll, except he held a gun unwaveringly trained on Clint.

“Oh my God, Phil, what did you just do?” Another man came out of the van. “You shot Matthews!”

“That’s not Matthews,” the accountant said.

Clint pushed himself to his feet, gritting through the pain. He wasn’t going to take this sitting down. He had walked with worse than a gunshot wound in his thigh. He could…

The other agent pulled out a tranq gun, and Clint could not move fast enough with his wound to avoid it.

Clint fell back to the ground, his vision blacking out. “Motherfuck…”

The accountant’s congenial smile was the last thing Clint saw before passing out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will go up in two-weeks, July 5th. I'm traveling for work this coming week and it makes it very difficult for me to edit and post on time, so rather than stress about it in the airport we're just going to skip a week. 
> 
> So come back in two weeks to see what happens when Phil and Clint get to talk in person for the first time!
> 
> As usual you can find me on [tumblr!](https://the-feels-assassin.tumblr.com/)


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phil Coulson and Clint Barton talk face-to-face for the first time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your patience! This chapter is a little longer than normal so I hope that makes up for the two week wait!

Phil observed Barton from behind the safety of a one-way mirror. They had kept him sedated for the entire transfer from Kansas to the New York office. Now Barton was strapped to a bed in their most secure medical facility. The doctors had finally stopped the sedative, so the mercenary could wake up naturally. He might wake up any moment now, which was why Phil was here, waiting. He wanted to be there, he wanted to be the first person the mercenary spoke to.

On the table in front of Phil was all the personal belongings that Barton had on his person at the moment they’d gotten him. It wasn’t much. They’d left his bow and arrow with the bike; the Mid-West SHIELD office would take care of all of Barton’s Kansas effects. However, Barton had had his clothes, a wallet with some cash and a fake ID, another stash of cash in his boot, and a comm unit. It was the comm unit that baffled Phil, the two earpieces that connected to a black pack at the waist. SHIELD had very similar devices for keeping their teams in communication. But as far as Phil knew Hawkeye worked alone. Who had the mercenary been in communication with? Was he secretly working with some other organization?

This could be the snag in Phil’s plans to recruit him. If Barton was already part of some larger organization, he may not be receptive to SHIELD’s offer. And then it would be off to prison for the Amazing Hawkeye.

The door to the observation room opened. “You’re going to want Level fucking 5 for this aren’t you, rookie?”

“Level 5 and for you to stop calling me rookie,” Phil retorted, not even turning to look at the Assistant Director. He didn’t want to take his eyes off of Barton, as if the man might disappear if he looked away.

“I can only promise you one of those things, _rookie_ ,” Fury responded just like Phil knew he would. Phil had known Nick Fury for close to eighteen years, starting with when Fury was his commanding officer in the Army Rangers. Fury had personally recruited Phil into SHIELD, as a starting Level 2, allowing Phil to skip both the SHIELD academy and the Level 1 probie status due to Phil’s exemplary service in the Rangers. Phil hadn’t been a rookie since the early 80s. And yet here they were, seventeen years later, and in private, Fury still called him rookie.

For a moment the two men stood in silence watching the mercenary. Sleeping, Barton didn’t look all that dangerous; if anything he looked painfully young. Barton was twenty-seven—an adult by every right—but at thirty-five, Phil found himself looking at people in their twenties as if they were kids. Barton’s whole life was still ahead of him, and he was young enough that if he started on a different path now, his mercenary days would only be remembered as an unfortunate blip.

“You’re going to try to recruit him, aren’t you?” Fury asked.

“Of course,” Phil said.

“This man has at least two hundred recorded kills,” Fury said.

“He is very good at what he does.”

“Not everyone is redeemable, Phil.”

“Agreed,” Phil responded. “But that doesn’t mean we should stop trying.” Even after years in this business, seeing how truly horrible people could be, he also saw how many desperate people there were just looking for a way out. And he had seen how easy it was for the supposed good guys to write them off. Phil had been called a lost cause at eighteen—eighteen!—and many had given up on him as a kid destined for prison. But a judge had given Phil a choice: join the Army or go to jail. Phil had taken it—he had been begrudging about it, but he had taken it. And the Army had changed his life. Phil was the man he was today because a judge had given him a chance. And Phil had always viewed it as his duty to pay that forward. To see what no one else could. To give people a chance.

It was never too late to change your trajectory. Phil believed that. It hadn’t been too late for him, and it wasn’t too late for Hawkeye.

 

#

 

When Clint woke up, he was strapped down to a hospital bed. Fucking hell. He kept his breathing deep, hoping they thought he was still sleeping so he could take stock of his surroundings. The room was bright and white, like any other hospital room—not that Clint had been in too many as he never went to the hospital if he could help it, but he watched _ER_ on occasion. He knew what hospitals were like.

He was strapped down at his wrists and ankles, plus a strap tight across his chest for good measure. His leg was pretty tightly bandaged—he supposed that was for the gunshot wound—and there was an IV in his hand. Must have been some sort of painkiller because the pain in his leg wasn’t as bad as it should have been. In fact, his leg felt good enough that if he could just get free of these straps, he could probably walk on it quite a bit. Or maybe…he eyed the ceiling tiles above him. They definitely looked like the standard offset tiles, with enough space between the real ceiling and the tiles to make room for electrical and HVAC. It wouldn’t take much to get himself up there, and no one ever did think to look in the ceilings.

But worse than the lights and the straps was the fucking fact that they had taken his fucking hearing aids.

_Motherfuckers._

Clint couldn’t even hear the heart-rate monitor that he knew must be beeping beside him. He had 80% hearing loss, and the beep was out of the range of his hearing. He’d lost most of the high and low frequency ranges, and honestly without his aids, there was very little he could hear. There could be five different agents talking in this room right now and unless Clint lifted up his head to look, he’d never know. Fucking motherfuckers. Who takes a man’s hearing aids? Surely that’s some sort of violation of some sort of civil right. Even prisoners got rights! Surely this was covered by the Geneva Convention or something like that.

Or they hadn’t realized they were hearing aids. After Natasha had done him the favor of turning them into some mad spy-gear (he got AM, FM, and CB radio on those puppies!), he supposed they didn’t really look like your standard hearing aids. As the last bits of sedative wore off and his mind started working more normally, he realized this was the more likely solution. They would want Clint to be able to hear them for whatever questions they inevitably had. They probably thought his hearing aids were some sort of communication device, and it made sense to not allow a prisoner his comms to home base. Yes, that was much more likely. They didn’t know Clint was hard of hearing.

And if that was the case, Clint couldn’t let them know. He couldn’t give them any edge, any angle. He would have to play it as straight as he could. Which meant lip reading and covering what he hadn’t heard with his trademark stubbornness and insolence. Surely they wouldn’t expect anything less.

But it also meant Clint couldn’t pretend to be asleep any longer. For all he knew there was an agent in the room talking to him right now. So Clint opened his eyes, lifted his head as much as he could considering the straps, and looked around.

Thank God the room was empty. There were no agents, nurses, or doctors, though there was a very large mirror on the wall to his right. He glared at the mirror and shouted, “Hey I need to piss. Someone going to come take care of that?”

Moments later the door to his hospital room opened and in stepped that fucking accountant. The man was dressed impeccably, in a perfectly pressed charcoal gray suit, as if he was heading to a bank not an interrogation. That was probably this guy’s whole fucking shtick: looking unassuming and friendly and not at all lethal. Well, Clint wasn’t going to make that mistake.

“Motherfucker,” Clint growled. “You shot me!”

The man lifted his eyebrows. “Yes. I did. I’m Agent [Olsen?] of the Strategic Homeland [Inter-something??], Enforcement and Logistics Division.” Clint wasn’t sure he got the name right. Olsen? Fuck, he hated lip reading and names were literally the worst. People never enunciated enough, and accents always threw everything off. But oh well. So what if he called this dickwad agent the wrong name. It would annoy the shit out of him, and Clint wasn’t feeling very generous right now.

“Fucking SHIELD,” Clint spat.

“You’ve heard of us then. Hopefully that makes things easier,” the agent said.

“Just go ahead and skip to the part where you threaten me or demand information or whatever it’s going to be. I actually do have to piss, so the faster we can get to that part the better.”

“If you think we’re going to loosen your straps, Mr. Barton, this must be your first rodeo. You’re on painkillers, so you probably haven’t noticed yet we put a catheter in. You’re not going anywhere any time soon.”

 _Fucking hell_! A catheter! Well there went Clint’s Plan A. It was amazing how many bad situations you could get out of with a well planned “bathroom break.” But Natasha was right—she was always right—SHIELD wasn’t made of amateurs.

“What I would like to talk to you about,” the agent continued, “is your options. As I see it, you have two. Based on your history and the evidence we’ve gathered, there is no court in the land that wouldn’t give you a life sentence many times over. With some of the states you’ve worked in, the death penalty might even be on the table…”

“You could have just killed me yourself,” Clint said. “It would have been cleaner.”

“I could have,” the agent agreed. “While my preference was to bring you in alive, you should know Mr. Barton that you living was not a priority. However, since you are alive, that brings me back to option 2.”

“Work for you,” Clint sneered.

“Yes.” The agent didn’t even blink at Clint beating him to the punch. So far nothing had phased him, his face a mask of pleasantness. “With your [ill?] and history, I [something?] an asset to SHIELD…” The lip reading was beginning to take it’s toll on Clint. God, he hated lip reading so much. He couldn’t actually be certain he was deciphering anything properly, and he was tired of this stupid fucking agent and his stupid fucking bland accountant persona.

“You know what, Agent, fuck you.” Clint let his head fall back into the pillow and closed his eyes. He was done talking. “Send me to prison. Send me to Texas and the fucking death penalty. Just get the hell out of my room.”

Clint didn’t open to his eyes to see if the agent left. He needed time to think. Needed time to figure out what his next move was. Because he fuck them if they really thought they could cage him. Clint Barton was his own master, and he did not fucking take orders. Especially not from fucking accountants.

 

#

 

Phil left Clint Barton to stew, nonplussed. He hadn’t expected much more from their first conversation. He’d really just wanted to introduce the idea of Barton joining SHIELD, to get the man thinking about his options. Phil wasn’t unaware of the fact that working for the organization that had captured him was probably not high on Barton’s priority list. It would take more than one conversation to convince Barton over to their side. Especially when Phil was both the one who shot him and the one who wanted to convince him. It wasn’t ideal, but Phil would trust no other agent with this. Most of the agents who had touched the Hawkeye case wanted the man in jail. They didn’t see his potential.

Personally Phil thought they were all blind. The work the mercenary has pulled off was frankly astounding. There were at least two cases of Barton single-handedly killing over ten men. Phil didn’t know any SHIELD agents who could say the same. Hell, short of the Black Widow, he couldn’t think of very many even on the global scale. This was a man who as far as Phil knew worked completely alone, always got his target, and came out with his own life. Barton’s talent would be wasted in jail, but more importantly Barton’s life would be wasted.

Jasper was in the observation room when Phil entered. “I don’t understand, Phil. Let’s just throw him in jail and be done with it.”

“It would be easier,” Phil said. He watched the mercenary on the bed. Barton was struggling against the straps. He looked like he was trying to move his head down far enough to gnaw at the chest strap. But of course, SHIELD had thought of that, so it was just far enough away.

“It’s easier and it gets Hawkeye off the board forever,” Jasper said. “If he does agree to join us, you know it’s more likely that he’ll just be trying to play us. Waiting until you trust him just enough for him to give us the slip. And then where will we be? Back to square one.”

“I know, Jas.”

“Then why? Why can’t we just be done with Hawkeye?”

It was a fair question. It was the one people always asked him when he tried to flip an enemy. And to be fair, this was the first time Phil tried to flip an asset without having a previous relationship with them. Phil was considered an expert at making allies in the field, working with those allies—usually undercover—building trust and then eventually flipping them, coming back to SHIELD with a new asset in tow. It was what had gotten Phil his Level 4. But Phil had never before tried to flip someone with no previous relationship.

“I like the challenge,” Phil said, settling on an answer that Jasper would accept. “And if I manage it, Fury has to give me the Level 6.”

“We’re all going to die so you can get Level 6,” Jasper said. “You know no one else is going to take him. He’s going to be entirely your problem.”

“I know,” Phil said. Fury had made that clear too. This was Phil’s project. If he succeeded, it wouldn’t just be Level 6. It would be an asset the likes of which SHIELD had never seen. And more importantly it would be a man back on the path of good.

It’s what Captain America would do, so it was what Phil Coulson was going to.

Thinking of Captain America made Phil’s thoughts drift to his email. He hadn’t gotten a chance to check his personal email since getting back from the op. There could be emails from Grayson waiting. Emails full of banter, comics discourse, and if Phil was particularly lucky, Harry Potter. After some serious soul searching, Phil had decided he was a Gryffindor. He wanted to tell Grayson that, and see what house Grayson thought he was in. Phil had his money on Hufflepuff.

But what Phil really wanted to tell Grayson about was the Hawkeye op. He wanted to tell Grayson about Hawkeye the man: how he had singlehandedly outsmarted three different SHIELD teams, how he used skills learned from the circus to always escape, and how he could take down three agents single-handedly and almost—almost!—even outsmart Phil to escape. If Barton was a comic book, Grayson would devour every issue. Especially if Phil managed to flip Hawkeye. It would be the perfect redemption story, the villain turned hero.

But really Phil just wanted to share his joy with Grayson. He couldn’t share it here at work—not with Jasper, who was still nursing his wounds from his failed attempt to capture Hawkeye, and certainly not with Fury who was his boss. Maybe if Melinda or Garrett were here, they could go out for drinks and celebrate. But even then it wouldn’t be the same. He wanted to regale Grayson with this story, impress him with how SHIELD fit all the pieces together, and how it was Phil who got the jump on him. Dammit, he wanted to impress Grayson with his awesomeness.

But he couldn’t, and he never would be able to. With Grayson, Phil would always just have to be a boring consultant, who perhaps handled big money clients but never really did anything _cool_.

Ah well, there were other things Phil wanted to talk to Grayson about, there always were.

Phil turned to Jasper. “Can you watch him for a bit? I need to write my debrief and grab a few things.”

“On one condition,” Jasper said, holding up a hand. “Tell me how you knew it was Barton and not Matthews.”

Jasper had been trying to get that information out of Phil since he had shot Hawkeye. But Phil was an asshole who wanted to play up the mystery a bit longer of how he sighted the difference. SHIELD operated on secrets, and often it benefited an agent’s reputation to hold such random facts close to the chest. Like Fury’s fucking eye. Phil was never going to get that story out of him, and every rumor he heard was more epic than the last. So Phil simply replied, “I’ll be back by dinner. Don’t let the nurses feed him without me there.”

“The nurses know better than to touch his straps, Phil. Don’t worry about it. We’re not letting him go anywhere. Just, please. Tell me. Was it his height? Barton’s probably got about two inches on Matthews?”

Phil smiled mysteriously, and intended to leave while the question was still in the air, but then his eyes caught on Barton again. The mercenary was struggling with the wrist straps now, moving his shoulders in an awkward way that had to hurt. Phil was almost afraid if he left him, the man would disappear. But he couldn’t watch Barton forever, and he really did want to go back and gloat to Grayson.

Because Phil had brought in Hawkeye. Three other agents had failed and Phil was the one who had brought him in. That deserved a little gloating.

**— — —**

**To: DGrayson@aol.com**  
**From: CapRogers@hotmail.com**  
 **Subject: VICTORY IS MINE**  
 **Date: May 10, 2001**

Grayson, I wish I could explain to you in detail what a complete disaster this client situation was. I wish I could properly set this story up so when I tell you that I succeeded, you would be suitably impressed and awed by my work prowess. Unfortunately client confidentiality and our own no-details agreement keeps me from sharing the specifics. What I can tell you is that three others before me tried to handle this client and failed to do so.

There was a part of me that never doubted that I could handle this case. I am somewhat known as the fixer, the one they send in for the hard clients. On the other hand, my colleagues who handled this case before me are some of the best. And a part of me wondered if this was going to be the case that brought everything crashing down. Not that this client’s situation is completely resolved. There are still issues to be worked out. It’s going to be a huge challenge going forward, and I’m moving forward in a way that most of my coworkers disagree with. But I think it’s the right way—no, I know it’s the right way. And I have to stick to my guns. It’s what Captain America would do.

I’m sorry this email is probably making no sense. But as hard as it is to talk around some of the details with you, it’s nice that I don’t have to hide how I feel about it. It’s not the same in the office. I have to maintain a professional exterior at all times. That means no gloating, no expressing my doubts, not letting anyone suspect that beneath it all I’m human too. It’s hard.

Despite the lack of details between us, sometimes I feel like you’re the only person I can be truly open with.

Anyway, if you were local, I’d totally invite you out for a drink, because I need to celebrate! So go out and have a drink for me, Grayson! Cheers!

Hope your gig is going as well as my recent case went and that it’s a smashing success. I’ll be here to chat, whenever you get back.

— — —

 

Clint spent an hour struggling against the straps. He tried every angle, every trick, and every twist he had ever learned from the circus magician. If there was a way to slip a knot or strap Clint knew it, but these fucking SHIELD agents clearly knew a thing or two about holding someone against their will. Even the extremes like dislocating his shoulder or breaking his thumbs wouldn’t help him. At this point it was better to save his strength than continue struggling.

In situations like this Clint generally found the best way to escape was to wait his captors out. They were hyper vigilant right now—it made sense after the number of times they’d tried to capture him—but eventually they’d grow lax. Or they would transfer him out of the hospital room and to a prison. Transfers were always the best time for an escape. They would have to loosen the straps and probably cuff him. Slipping handcuffs had been one of the first tricks the circus magician had taught Clint, when he was thirteen. Clint just had to keep his eyes open and look for weaknesses and opportunities. No one was perfect. There was always an opportunity to escape.

For now, all Clint could really do was watch and wait, which really just left Clint with his thoughts—not his preferred way to spend his time. This was probably part of SHIELD’s process: bore him until he broke. Well, unfortunately for them, Clint was a sniper. He could stay still and bored for hours if it was what it took to get out of a situation. So Clint relaxed his body and let his mind wander over some of his favorite comic books and Cap.

He wondered what Cap would think if he knew the truth of Clint’s situation right now. Obviously Clint would never tell him, but when they’d discussed comics Clint had seen Cap had a strategic mind. He liked to analyze the tactics used by the writers for their heroes and villains. What analysis would Cap give of this scenario? Though perhaps that depended on how the comic portrayed Clint. Cap was the kind of guy who liked true, honest do-gooders like Captain America and Superman. Cap believed in the goodness of people; he believed that no matter the situation there was always a way to rise above, to be better, and to not succumb to the darkness of the world.

God, if Cap knew anything about Clint’s current situation, the reality was Cap would be so fucking disappointed in him. Cap would probably think that Clint deserved to be caught and deserved to go to jail, just like any other comic book villain.

And if Clint did not find an escape, he might very well end up in jail. Cap would never know what happened to Clint, why his pen-pal suddenly disappeared. Clint doubted there was internet in jail, and if there was internet it probably wasn’t for emailing pen-pals. But wait? Didn’t prisoners get regular mail? He was pretty sure they did, and as pathetic as it was, Clint knew Cap’s PO Box by heart. Worst case scenario, once Clint was in jail, he’d write Cap a letter the old fashioned way. He would have to figure out some story to tell him on why he didn’t have email address anymore. Perhaps a freelance job in the jungle?

Clint noodled on the possibilities and stories he could spin for Cap to pass the time. He wasn’t sure how much time actually passed—there was no clock in the room—but after a bit a nurse came in. She was a cute slip of a thing with a blonde pixie cut and no visible weapons.

“Hey,” Clint said, flashing her his most charming smile, “any chance we can turn the TV on?” It was an innocent enough request. It was always best to start with non controversial requests to build a modicum of trust. What started with turning on the TV could end with loosening of his straps.

However, the nurse ignored him. She didn’t even make eye contact. She changed out his IV bag, notated something on the clipboard at the end of his bed, and left without so much as a backwards glance.

Fucking professionals. They were too good at their jobs.

So it was back to thinking about comics and stories to tell Cap. Clint wondered if jails marked the letters somehow so you knew they came from a jail. Or did SHIELD actually disappear people? Was there some super secure SHIELD facility for criminals like Clint who weren’t even allowed mail? Because that would super suck. What would Cap think if Clint just disappeared and never emailed him back? If the reverse happened, and Cap never responded to one of Clint’s emails, he would probably pull on every favor he had to discover Cap’s real identity, to figure out if Cap had died or just gotten tired of him. Cap didn’t strike him as the kind of guy to just stop responding. If he got tired of Clint, he’d probably send a note or something, asking to correspond less. So if Cap stopped responding it was most likely because he was dead.

That’s probably what Cap would think had happened to Clint. People went out every day to do mundane activities and never made it home. Clint knew that first hand. And…honestly, better Cap think him dead than know the truth.

Clint never wanted Cap to know who Clint really was.

The door opened again, and Clint looked up. It was the fucking agent who shot him. That was odd. It hadn’t been nearly long enough for the boredom tactic to really work. You had to give it at least a solid 24 hours of solitary alone before you tried to get information from someone. Everyone knew that.

The nurse followed the agent in, with a tray of food. The smell hit Clint’s nose and his stomach rumbled. Nice. They weren’t going to starve him out. Considering they had an IV in him, he really didn’t need to worry about the food being poisoned or drugged. They’d already drugged him. He wondered if this meant that this agent Olsen(?) was playing good cop—an odd choice considering the man had shot him. If Clint was running this operation, he’d have Olsen play the bad cop, not afraid to cause further harm to the prisoner. He’d either bring in someone new to play bad cop or use the agent who had acted shocked at Olsen shooting Clint. But of course, SHIELD hasn’t asked his opinion on how to interrogate himself for information.

Dinner was also a great chance for one of those transitional moments, where there might be a chance for Clint to escape. If he was really lucky, they were going to untie him so he could feed himself. The nurse still had no weapons, and Clint couldn’t see a visible gun on Olsen. Even if the agent had a gun hidden in his suit jacket, Clint didn’t really think the agent would shoot him. Olsen had already played his hand about wanting to recruit Clint. Why go to all this trouble to just shoot him now?

The food looked like some sort of oatmeal—ugh, they were probably going to have the nurse feed him. Oatmeal was the perfect kind of food for that. But Clint was hungry and he needed to eat it to maintain his strength.

Clint dragged his eyes away from the food and to the agent. Crap. The man had been speaking. Without paying attention from the beginning it was hard to catch on, to figure out where the word started and ended.

“Look just fucking let me eat and leave,” Clint snapped, to try to cover he had no idea what the fuck was actually happening.

“Agent Ford,” the agent said with a go-ahead sort of motion. The nurse approached Clint with the tray and set it it on a table on the left of Clint’s bed, and then the agent—the stupid fucking agent who seemed to exist solely to torment Clint at this point—went and sat on the chair to Clint’s fucking right.

There was no way he was going to be able to pay attention to the nurse and keep his eye on the agent. Fucking hell. Goddamn this fucking agent. Did he realize what he was doing? Probably not. But if Clint wasn’t careful, they were going to figure out Clint was deaf. Clint couldn’t allow that. Olsen had already shot him and drugged him. They had him on painkillers, which always took the edge off his mind, making him just a tiny bit slower than he should be. He couldn’t give them this piece of leverage. He couldn’t let them know.

Some fucking idiots might think that Clint viewed his deafness as a weakness, but if Trick Shot had taught Clint anything worth holding onto, it was how to utilize everything in his arsenal and view it as a strength.  Clint had an ability no one else in his field had. The ability to turn his ears fucking off. He could focus without the distraction of sound. It had served him well in his circus days, being able to just turn off the roar of the crowd and focus on his targets. And he’d only found it helpful in his mercenary career. He could throw a flashbang and only hear a distant muffled thump.  He could kill without hearing the screams. And when it was critical he hear, all he had to do was flick a switch. He was the amazing fucking Hawkeye, whose ears went on and off at his own control.

His ears were his edge, and to hell if he was going to let SHIELD know that. He was going to get out of here without this goddamn agent suspecting a single fucking thing. No government suit was going to get the upper hand on Clint fucking Barton.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next week: Phil decides he might need another tactic and some new teammates to get through to Barton.
> 
> As usual you can follow me on tumblr at the-feels-assassin!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phil realizes he needs to try a different approach if he's going to flip Hawkeye, and Clint realizes he needs to try a different tactic if he wants to not be disappeared by SHIELD.

Phil Coulson’s picture of the Clint Barton had been based on words in a file. If asked to describe the mercenary, Phil would have said competent, ruthless, slippery, and lethal. Now after almost 48 hours of observing the now conscious man, the legendary Hawkeye was transforming into a fuller picture of a man. A man who happened to be devastatingly attractive.

And boy, did Barton know it. Whenever a nurse came in alone, he was all charm: lazy smiles, bedroom eyes, and a tone of voice that Coulson could only describe as sex. The way Barton arched and stretched beneath the straps—he made his capture look like the start of a porno. This was a man who was clearly used to using the power of his smile and charm to get him out of any situation. Unfortunately for Barton, the nurses were all professionals. Not a single one of them blushed, and his usual one—Agent Ford—rarely even made eye contact with him. When she approached Barton it was with the detached impartiality of a mechanic examining a car.

Ford also happened to be a lesbian. If only Barton knew that of his two regular visitors, the one who swung his way was not the cute blonde but Phil. Would that result in Phil being the recipient of these charming smiles and sexy tone? Instead Phil only received Barton’s scorn and insolence.

When Phil and Ford walked into Barton’s room at the same time, Barton started acting of if Phil wasn’t even there. Barton would instead center his attention on Ford, who in turn never said a single word to him. Phil had tried to speak with Barton during that first meal, but Barton acted as if he didn’t hear a single word Phil said, other than a cutting glance towards Phil and a quick, “Can you just shut the fuck up?”

Phil stopped going in with Ford, instead going in by himself. Like now. Phil didn’t bring any weapons in with him. Even strapped up as Barton was, it wasn’t worth the risk. Every time Phil went in, however, Jasper was always in the observation room with his trusty Glock. If worse came to worse, well, the mirror wasn’t bullet proof glass.

When Phil entered the room, Barton immediately saw him—Ford left the medical bed in a sitting up position during the day shift. Barton’s eyes narrowed, his entire focus on Phil. It was a sniper’s gaze: unwavering and laser sharp. If a look could cause someone to burst into flames, Phil would be on fire.

Phil smiled blandly at the assassin. “Mr. Barton, if you have a moment, I would like to talk to you about your options.”

“I’ll have my secretary fucking pencil you in for tomorrow,” Barton snapped. “I’m busy right now, _Olsen._ ” He said the name with a sneer, clearly expecting some sort of rise out of Phil, as if the wrong name was the most clever thing Phil had ever been called.

“Right now works better with my schedule,” Phil responded. “I’m not sure you fully understand the options. Seven different states want to try you for your crimes. Canada and Mexico have already put in extradition requests. You are a popular man, Mr. Barton.”

“Fuck you,” Barton retorted, which had been his pretty standard response to everything Phil had said in the past two days.

Phil stepped forward until he was standing at the foot of Barton’s bed. “Mr. Barton, I do not think you understand the gravity of your situation.”

“I understand just fine, fuck you,” Barton said, his voice a little louder than absolutely necessary. “You’re trying to threaten me with prison so that I’ll take whatever deal to work for you. Well, fuck you, Olsen, because I’d rather be in jail than be your fucking bitch.”

“No one at SHIELD is anyone else’s bitch,” Phil said, carefully keeping his voice pleasant. “You would be a probationary agent for at least—”

Barton suddenly threw himself forward with a snarl, the entire bed moving forward an inch. It was only thanks to years of Rangers training that Phil didn’t flinch. Barton’s entire body was taut against his straps, and Phil could actually see the strain in the bed—as if Barton’s rage alone might break it. “Get the fuck out of my fucking room.”

Technically it was SHIELD’s room, but Phil could see this conversation was going nowhere. There was no point in further antagonizing the man. He inclined his head and left the room.

It was clear that in Barton’s book Phil was Public Enemy Number 1. It made sense—Phil had shot him—but it was a problem. Whether Barton realized it or not, Phil was his only friend here, the only one who actually wanted to flip him instead of sending him to jail. Phil needed to do something, anything, to get Barton to start listening to him. Ultimately he needed Barton to trust him, but Phil knew that would come much later. For now, he just needed the mercenary to let him speak.

When Phil entered the observation room, Jasper was standing with his gun pointed straight at Barton. The mercenary was raging against the straps, and was it Phil’s imagination or did his right wrist strap actually seem like it was tearing away from the bed? Surely that wasn’t possible.

“We need to get this lunatic out of here, Phil,” Jasper said, not taking his eyes off of Barton. “I know you have these…ideas. I know you think you’re doing the right thing, but he deserves to be in jail."

“We could use him,” Phil insisted.

“Well it’s fucking clear to me that he doesn’t want to be used,” Jasper snapped. “Fucking hell, Phil. Just let him go to jail like he wants.” Phil shot Jasper a look. If Barton wanted jail it was only because he didn’t know his options, he didn’t understand what Phil—what SHIELD—was offering him. Barton was desperate right now, like a cornered wild animal. But he didn’t realize that Phil wasn’t a hunter, he was wildlife rebab, and he just wanted to save him. Whether he liked it or not.

“I’m going to get the nurses to tranq him so we can replace the straps,” Phil said, heading for the door.

“If he gets out I’m shooting him,” Jasper yelled after Phil.

Moments later Agent Ford opened the door of the Medical room. She calmly walked past the struggling Barton and injected a sedative into his IV. The man let out a steady stream of curses until he passed out. Phil and Jasper entered the medical room as Ford busied herself looking over the straps.

“Look, Phil, you know I’ve got your back,” Jasper said, his voice tinged with exasperation. “But we’ve gotta think of a better plan than keep talking to him. He’s obviously not listening. You know…with everyone else we flipped, we found the thing that made them tick, the dream or motivation that would bring them in. And most of them didn’t want to be bad guys. But this guy, Phil? We don’t even know him.”

As much as Phil hated to admit it, Jasper was right. He honestly did not know what to do. He needed Barton to listen to him, but nothing Phil tried worked.

Ford pulled on Barton’s wrist straps, shaking her head. “He actually pulled through half of the stitching on the right side,” she commented. “We’re going to need to reinforce his straps. Particularly on the arms.”

“Requisition whatever you need,” Phil said. Ford nodded and then went back to her work, picking up the clipboard and notating. Phil liked Agent Ford—her efficiency and straightforwardness were an asset to SHIELD. And well, at least Barton talked to her.

Phil froze. He was an idiot. Here he was looking the answer in the face, and it was his own stupid pride keeping him from seeing it, because he had wanted to be the one to bring Barton in. Phil should have known it was going to go down like this from the moment the beginning—Barton wasn’t ever going to talk to the man who shot him. Phil had just wanted so badly to be the one who did this, the one who actually flipped Hawkeye. But Barton would never trust him, would never see Phil as anything other than the enemy. It was just Phil’s pride which didn’t want to let him trust Barton to anyone else. But if he really wanted to flip Barton—not for his pride’s sake but for SHIELD’s— he was going to have to let someone else in.

“We need to bring in a woman,” Phil said.

“What?” Jasper said at the same time Ford snorted, ”Obviously.”

Jasper and Phil looked to the nurse. She glanced up from her clipboard. “Barton will think he can manipulate a woman with his looks. He’ll underestimate her.”

“That…could work,” Jasper said, looking from Ford to Phil. “But Hand would just straight up murder him at this point, and May would probably kick his butt in the first five minutes.”

“May wouldn’t work” Phil agreed. “We need someone less hard than her, someone who seems just soft enough that he will think he might be able to take advantage of her.” He ticked off fingers as he listed attributes. “Being young would also help, he’ll underestimate her more. Of course she’ll need to be beautiful. And lethal.” She would need to be able to hold her own in a fight with Barton, if it came to that. She would need to be someone he thought was weak, but in reality wasn’t at all.

“And of course someone who is not currently on a mission and doesn’t mind babysitting an assassin for possibly the next year.” Jasper shook his head. “There is no one like that, Phil. There is no young, beautiful, competent agent just sitting around looking for a year-long babysitting assignment.” That was the problem. Phil didn’t socialize with too many young female agents. The ones he had worked with, the sort of shining star he was describing, were all constantly on demand for missions. There were still many men in this world that could be taken advantage of by a young beautiful agent.

“Bobbi Morse.” Both Phil and Jasper’s head snapped up, their gazes zeroing in on Agent Ford. She stood beside Barton’s bedside, taking his pulse, as if she hadn’t just dropped a name like it was their answer.

“Excuse me?” Phil asked.

“Agent Bobbi Morse.” Ford notated the pulse on her clipboard and then tucked her clipboard under her arm. She looked up at Phil. “She’s 27, lethal, and itching for an opportunity to get out of Analysis. She wants to be a Field Agent. But without the experience no one will give her the chance. I recommend partnering her with Maria Hill. She’s 22, fresh out of the Academy, with all the training of a field agent but definitely in need of field testing.” Hill, Phil had heard that name. Her file had crossed his desk—a new agent, looking for a supervising officer to take her into the field.

Phil didn’t usually do that sort of work, mentoring young agents, but perhaps the buffer of young agents eager to prove themselves between Phil and Hawkeye was exactly what they needed. While they both might be inexperienced, the two would bolster and balance each other. And any gaps in their experience and training, Phil and Jasper could fill.

“How…do you know this?” Jasper asked in surprise.

“Women of SHIELD Luncheon,” Ford answered. “Morse and Hill. Trust me. They’ll do the job.”

 

#

 

When Clint woke up the second time in SHIELD medical it was very much as the first: the lights were too bright, he still couldn’t hear, and he was strapped down. The main difference is that he could feel twice as many straps crisscrossing his body. Clint knew he had no one to blame for that but himself. He had lost control and let his insolence grow into rage. It was just that fucking Agent Olsen. Something about him—probably the fact he had fucking shot Clint—was like nails on the chalkboard of Clint’s mind. That stupid agent and his bland veneer made Clint want to burn this whole place down just to see if maybe then the agent would start to sweat.

But his anger had neither burned the place down nor made the agent sweat. Instead it had just resulted in Clint being even more securely strapped to his bed. Thank fuck, Natasha wasn’t here. He could almost feel the weight of her disappointment. She wouldn’t lecture him, no she would just give him that look, that insufferable look that said, “you are such an idiot.” Because he was. He needed SHIELD to relax their guard around him, not double it.

Natasha—if she was feeling generous—would advise him to play along. Not too sharp a turn that it was unbelievable, but to pretend as if they were slowly bringing him around based on their well reasoned arguments. As they slowly “changed” him, they would give him more freedom and license. Until the day when they gave him one freedom too many, and then he would be out of here like a shot, never to be seen again. It was what he needed to do, doing so just meant swallowing his pride and silently gritting his teeth around Agent Accountant instead of growling at him like a fucking animal.

Ugh, Clint hated this kind of long game stuff. He just wanted to go in and make the shot. This was Natasha’s territory and he was honestly not sure he could pull it off. But he had to try. Otherwise SHIELD was going to disappear him. This was his only option. Clint was going to start playing nice. He would bite his tongue and keep it civil. He was the Amazing fucking Hawkeye.

And it wouldn’t be the first time he had to be civil with someone who had shot him.

Determined, Clint boldly opened his eyes. He expected the room to be empty, as it had been last time he’d woken up. Instead he found himself surrounded by extraordinarily gorgeous women. One of the women stood at the end of his bed, reading his chart. She wore a black suit with a white buttoned-up top. Combined with her youth and severe bun, she looked like a waitress instead of the put together agent she was pretending to be. The other sat in the chair beside his bed, one long leg crossed elegantly over the other. Blond curls fell in loose ringlets past her shoulders, but it did nothing to soften her stare. She studied him as if he were a bug, and when he moved to look at her, she smiled like a predator.

For a drug induced moment, Clint wondered if he had awoken in some alternate reality where Olsen and his weaselly partner were women. But no, these women were too young and too gorgeous to be Mr. Accountant and his partner, even in a parallel universe. Plus the blonde was wearing a lab coat with her name emblazoned on it. Morse.

Clint put on his best smolder and looked at the woman. “Hello, nurse.”

“Doctor,” she corrected. “Dr. Morse.” She rose to her feet in one elegant motion and because for once Clint’s luck took a turn for the better, she stepped towards the other agent. Clint could now see them both. “Though not a medical doctor. PhD.”

“And I’m Agent [Ill?],” the other woman said. Clint quickly flipped through every word that ended in an ill and started with a hard to discern consonant—kill, fill, gill, hill, jill, lill, nill, rill, sill, vill. Hill seemed the most likely. He’d go with that until they corrected him.

“What happened to Agent McBland-face?” Clint asked.

Hill lifted an eyebrow, and Morse’s smile turned a little more genuine. “Your case has been reassigned,” Hill said, clipping his chart back on the end of the bed. “Agent Morse and I will be working with you from now on.”

Clint could not believe his luck. Fate was giving him a second chance, a way to play it differently without being too suspicious. Instead of having to bite his tongue, his pride, and his rage to work with Olson, he could just let them think a pretty face led him down the path to good. Which was obviously the ploy they were trying here. They must have seen how he behaved with his nurses and decided he would respond better to beautiful, young female agents. Clint could work with that. He could play that up. Let them think these pretty agents were leading him about by his dick. Then they might trust him faster, and he would get the fuck out of SHIELD faster.

“Well, ladies,” Clint said with his most charming smile. “I’m the Amazing Hawkeye.”

Clint had experienced many women undress him with his eyes, and he had enjoyed it nearly every time. But when Agent Morse scanned him up and down, he didn’t feel sexy. He felt like a frog being pinned for dissection. She didn’t say anything, but he could feel her judge him against the word amazing. And in her estimation he had clearly come out wanting.

“We are aware of your history, Mr. Barton,” Hill said, and honestly Clint was thankful for the excuse to not look directly at Morse anymore. “All of the US government is aware of your history.”

“As well as the governments of Canada and Mexico,” Morse said. “You do get around, Mr. Barton.”

“I never said I wasn’t easy.” Clint added a little bit of leer to his smolder. Neither woman’s expression shifted in the slightest. Damn. SHIELD made women steel traps.

Natasha would be proud of them.

“Such…ease…comes with it’s consequences,” Hill continued. “I believe it’s already been explained to you that you are wanted in seven different states as well as Mexico and Canada. SHIELD is experiencing quite a bit of pressure to hand you over. And honestly, it would be easier for us to do so. There are many in SHIELD who just want your case closed, no questions asked.” And here it was coming again, the pitch to join up instead of going to jail. And even though it was an option Clint did not want, he knew it was important to convince them that he was at least beginning to consider it. It was what Natasha would do, so it would be what Clint did.

“SHIELD could use a man with your skills, Mr. Barton,” Morse said.

“What? You don’t have snipers?” Clint asked. He’d give anything to be able to cross his arms in this moment, and nonchalantly lean against a wall or something. Do anything with his body, except be stuck in this fucking bed, unable to really move anything. Natasha always preached that body language was one of the number one tells and therefore one of your number one weapons in an undercover situation. She was a master of using her body to convey things her words might not. But Clint couldn’t do anything like that. All he had was his expression. And the smolder was beginning to feel useless.

And it’s not like he could look away as if in thought. If he stopped looking at them, he’d miss whatever they had to say next.

“We do,” Morse said. “But our snipers can’t disappear off of multi-story buildings. Our snipers also usually work in teams with agents and handlers. We don’t have very many people who can do what you do—operate completely alone. Most agents aren’t comfortable going in with no backup, Mr. Barton.” Well, that’s because their agents probably hadn’t been betrayed by most of their backup at one time or another. All it took was getting shot in the back once to never let anyone watch your back again.

“That’s why they call me Amazing,” Clint said.

“And we would like to add your amazing-ness to SHIELD.” Hill stepped forward, her eyes practically glowing with belief. “I don’t know what you may have heard about SHIELD, Mr. Barton, but we were founded by Peggy Carter for the purpose of serving and protecting the people of this world. Not just this country, but the world, from the threats they cannot protect themselves from. Whether that’s drug rings, human traffickers, cabals, and even more that most can’t even imagine—stuff they don’t even know is out there. Mr. Barton, the work SHIELD does—we’re on the cutting edge of security and safety for the world. Adding you to our team, would help us to better accomplish that mission. We want you to work for us, because we want SHIELD to be amazing.”

Oh wow. She was a true believer. It had to be her youth. She must still be new to the organization. Because no covert government organization was as pure and noble as she was painting SHIELD. Not that Clint had worked with a lot of covert government organizations, but Natasha had. And Clint trusted her.

“You want me to work with you,” Clint said, “but you have me strapped to this bed like an animal. I’m sorry if that doesn’t garner a lot of trust on my side.”

Neither agent responded immediately. Morse cocked her head slightly to the side, as if listening to something, and Hill’s eyes darted to the large mirror. And there it was, the tick, the reveal, that these women weren’t in here alone. They were of course being watched. And if Clint had to bet, it was Olsen giving them orders right now.

The agent may have given up on being the one directly in the room with Clint, but he clearly still hadn’t given up on Clint. His career must be riding on whether he turned Hawkeye. So he had found some beautiful women to do the direct interfacing for him, while he was still in the shadows pulling the strings.

Fucking Olsen. The man clearly thought he knew what he was doing, thought he knew exactly how to manipulate Clint with these striking women. Well, Clint would play right into that, into Olsen’s fucking pride and arrogance. Let Olsen think his plans were working, let him think he was the puppetmaster and Clint was fucking clay in his hands—mixed metaphor but whatever. The point stood. The fucking accountant agent would be too busy gloating over his taming of the Amazing Hawkeye that he would never see Clint’s inevitable escape coming.

After all, pride cometh before a fall. And Clint was great at falling.

“Fair enough,” Morse said. “We’ll bring in the nurse.” And well, Clint hadn’t expected them to give in to his demand so quickly, but he would take it. But he also knew this was a test. Undoubtedly Olsen or some other agent stood on the other side of that glass with a gun pointed at him, and Olsen had already proven he wouldn’t hesitate to shoot. Clint needed to go against his instinct. He needed to channel Natasha Romanoff. Most importantly, he needed to behave. He needed to pretend he was considering things.

And maybe, if he behaved, they’d eventually allow him internet access.

 

#

 

Phil stood in the observation room with his gun trained on Barton while Agent Ford did her work. She removed the catheter efficiently—Barton winced a little and Phil found himself wincing sympathetically. Hill looked away during that bit, while Morse watched clinically. Ford had been right about them, from everything Phil could tell. Hill was wet behind the ears but had the training and a good head on her shoulders. Morse had been working in the Bio-Tech department, where she had been brilliant and efficient but dissatisfied. She had put in for a transfer at every opportunity, but apparently was too brilliant for Analysis to lose. Phil had to promise Dr. Alugbin quite a few favors to even get him to consider releasing Morse, and in the end Phil had to bring Fury in—a silver bullet he always hated using.

But Phil would do whatever it took to get Hawkeye into SHIELD. He was going to get a Level 6 and the satisfaction of doing the right thing. No mid-level manager was going to stand in his way.

Ford removed the straps, starting at his ankles and moving her way up. Phil had to consciously not tense up as she got near his arms. Hopefully Barton was smart enough not to try anything. There were three well-trained agents in the room—even if Barton might underestimate them because they were women. And if they didn’t take him down, Phil or Jasper would. Jasper stood in the hallway, with his gun trained on the door, just in case Barton made it that far.

Unstrapping him was a gesture of trust, a small bridge built between SHIELD and the mercenary, but Phil wasn’t stupid. Barton was undoubtedly using this to look for an exit, though Phil was grateful he had at least seemed to listen to Hill and Morse. Listening was the first step. Building trust was the second. And if they were lucky, in the end, maybe Barton would sign on the dotted line and become a SHIELD agent.

Ford released his wrists, and when Barton lifted his hands, Phil’s trigger finger twitched. But no, the man wasn’t making a move. He just seemed to be marveling that he could move his hands. The last strap was the wide one across his chest. Ford released it, and Barton’s whole body sagged momentarily. Phil hadn’t realized how tense the man had been holding himself beneath the straps.

“I’m gonna sit up now,” Barton said. “And itch like everything that’s been itching. So please no one shoot me.”

“Before you do.” Ford held up a hand stopping him, and surprise crossed Barton’s face. It was the first time Ford had actually directly talked to him. “Remember, you do have a fairly fresh gunshot wound in your leg. I don’t know that I would try walking about.”

“Trust me,” Barton said, “I haven’t forgotten the gunshot wound.” And then he threw a look at the mirror—as if he knew Phil was standing on the other side. His gaze was off by about three feet, but still Barton was a smart man to realize that Phil hadn’t completely left the situation.

Barton sat up and turned so that he could hang his good leg off the side of the bed, while his bad leg was still safe. The move turned his back to Phil, and he really couldn’t complain about the view as the archer stretched his impressive shoulders and arms. Barton groaned as he stretched, and if Phil’s mouth went a little bit dry at the sound, well there was no one around to comment on it. The mercenary was impressive, and Phil was only a man.

“Careful of the IV,” Ford said, to which Barton didn’t respond or react at all, still continuing his stretches.

“Barton,” Hill said, and the man paused. “Be careful of the IV.”

“Don’t suppose I can get rid of it can I?” Barton swiveled around, looking for Ford who was standing behind him.

“I wouldn’t,” Ford said.

“Unless you like pain,” Morse jibed, but once again Barton didn’t respond.

Phil narrowed his eyes, an idea beginning to form in his head. Barton hadn’t reacted to Ford when she was behind him, but had responded to Hill who had been in front of him. And then when he turned to look at Ford, he hadn’t reacted to Morse who would be out of his line of sight. Whenever Phil had entered the room with Ford, Barton had completely ignored him, instead always focusing his attention and gaze on Ford. Barton always responded to her but in those situations had never responded to Phil.

As if he could not hear people out of his line of sight.

Phil let his eyes drop from Barton and to the set of belongings still displayed on the countertop. What if…what if the comm unit wasn’t a comm unit at all?

“Hill,” Phil said, putting his gaze back on the room. She was standing opposite of Barton’s gaze, as he conversed with Ford. “Clap your hands.” The agent looked to the mirror in surprise. Phil really needed to work on that with her—these reactions she gave to his commands. A field agent should never give such an obvious reaction. “Do I need to repeat myself, Agent Hill?”

A small shake of her head and then she clapped her hands.

Neither Ford nor Morse reacted—they’d heard the command over the comms—but Barton also didn’t react. He was still talking to Ford about what sort of drugs were in his IV and trying to negotiate getting it unhooked. He hadn’t heard the clap.

It was like a curtain fell from before Phil’s eyes. Clint Barton was hard of hearing. The mercenary wasn’t part of a larger team he need a comm unit for, it was a hearing aid. That was why he’d been able to throw the flash bang and get the upper hand without affecting himself. It was why he ignored Phil whenever he was in the room with Ford. Hell, it might even be why Barton called him Olsen. The man hadn’t heard his name at all. He was lip reading, and doing a fairly damn good job of it. Even the professional lip readers Phil knew could barely keep up half a conversation based on lip reading.

Yet another skill Barton had that SHIELD could use.

Every occurrence of Barton’s insolence was flashing through Phil’s mind. Most often it had been in response to a question—a question he probably hadn’t even heard in the first place. Every “fuck you” Barton gave as an answer could just be a cover for not knowing how to respond to something he couldn’t understand, alhough Phil didn’t doubt he deserved at least a few of those since he had shot Barton, and the flippance came to Barton pretty naturally for it to be unpracticed. But the sheer level of uncooperative-ness, even his rage, might be explained by his lack of hearing. If he didn’t understand what was happening, it was undoubtedly easier to cover it up with anger rather than try to decipher what had been said.

To even begin to reach Barton they needed him to listen, and for him to listen, he needed to actually hear.

Phil lowered his gun. “Stand down. I don’t think Barton is going to run. Not right now.”

But he would try to run. They needed to build trust. And now Phil knew what the next act of trust would be.

Hearing aids.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come back next week for small acts of trust between SHIELD and Clint, as well as Phil worrying over email. :)
> 
> As usual you can find me on tumblr at the-feels-assassin.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phil begins his "small acts of trust" between SHIELD and the man known as Hawkeye.

As far as captors went, SHIELD actually wasn’t that bad—not that Clint would tell them that. He had been in some bad situations in his day: dirty rooms where he worried about tetanus or hep C, sound proofed basements that looked like they couldn’t decide if they were torture chambers or sex dungeons, and of course the bright joyous colors of Trick’s tent. Even now ten years later Clint’s mind shied away from the memory. Some things didn’t bear remembering.

Now that he wasn’t strapped to the bed, SHIELD had even given him real clothes—as opposed to the ass-less hospital gown. They weren’t his clothes or anything, but a white cotton shirt and a pair of loose fitting sweat pants. The nurse—Ford—had delivered these with a threat. “Even a hint of tearing in your wound, and I’ll have you naked and strapped to the bed so fast you won’t even know what happened.”

“Kinky,” Clint had responded with a flash of a smile, to which of course she did not respond. This was perhaps the most subtle and insidious torture yet: surround a man with beautiful women who wouldn’t even crack a smile.

Clint was still a prisoner in a hospital room, hooked up to God knows what sort of drugs, but he was no longer strapped down, he was clothed, and they had even brought him some books for entertainment. Hell, they’d brought him a variety of books because in Hill’s words: “We don’t know you what you like to read.” So now sitting on a small table beside Clint’s bed was a Tom Clancy novel, what looked like a bodice ripper, an Agatha Christie mystery, and some kids’ book.

The books had to be some sort of psychological test—whatever book he picked would undoubtedly be used to psychoanalyze him later—but until he figured out what each book was supposed to mean, he wasn’t sure which book he would choose. He didn’t want to accidentally give away anything real. Would it psych them out more if he chose the bodice ripper or the kids’ book? Or should he choose the Tom Clancy book like a good little spy?

He didn’t know. SHIELD was playing nice, but Clint could never forget that they were a shadowy government organization who fucking shot him. They were trying to lull him into some sort of peace, some sort of trust, but Clint wasn’t fucking stupid and he wasn’t going to fucking fall for it.

But he was bored. His gaze went back to the books. Fuck them, why couldn’t they have just brought him one awful boring book instead of making this like a whole test? This was the most nefarious torture yet.

The lights in the room flickered, starting Clint off of his bed. What the hell? Then the door opened and Morse stepped in, holding a small bag in one hand. She was alone, which was a little surprising. He had expected her to continue tag-teaming with Hill, but he wasn’t going to complain about his good luck. One agent was easier to track and understand than two.

But why had she flickered the light? What was that about? Most people usually knocked. Not that he’d be able to hear a knock, but she didn’t know that, right?

“Mr. Barton,” she said, and Clint froze. She was over-enunciating in a way she hadn’t been before, exaggerating the motion of her lips over the b.

Fuck. They knew.

He had gotten lax in that last meeting with her, Hill, and Ford. He had just been so goddamn happy to not be strapped to the fucking bed anymore. Three people in the room was almost impossible to track, and clearly he had missed something. Something obvious. And now they knew. Because no one over-enunciated like that unless they knew.

Morse must have seen the change in his demeanor because she went still. Then she stepped forward, set the small bag on his bed, and left the room.

Clint waited until the door clicked shut to investigate the bag. It held a small black case, like a case for fancy headphones. But Clint knew in his gut that wasn’t what they were. He could feel it. They knew. There was no way in hell that opening this case would reveal anything other than a pair of hearing aids.

They had no actual confirmation of his hearing loss. They couldn’t. If he opened the case and accepted the hearing aids, he would be confirming something they couldn’t know for sure. Or he could open it and act confused, like he didn’t know why they would present him with such a gift. SHIELD undoubtedly didn’t mean this to be a test, but rather some sort of peace treaty.

Clint didn’t want their fucking peace treaty. And this gift of trust showed they didn’t understand him at all. They viewed his ears as a weakness.

Fucking Agent Olsen wanted Clint to be able to hear his carefully orchestrated entreaties. Well Clint didn’t want to give him the fucking pleasure.

Except Natasha would tell him to take them, that not only would it build trust with SHIELD but it would actually help him to be able to hear what the fuck was going on. But Natasha didn’t understand, she never could understand what it was like to be hard of hearing like Clint was. Clint’s aids had been _his_. No one outside of Nat and the circus knew about them, and that was the way Clint had liked it. Hell, he would prefer several choice members of the circus to not know about them as well. Not because his hearing aids were his weakness, but because they were his. He could get through this fucking world without them, and he owed nothing to the hearing world who couldn’t take the time to slow down and just make sure they were understood before moving on. Fuck them all.

On the other hand, SHIELD didn’t understand, and maybe that’s what he wanted. Let them think he was fucking grateful for their hearing aids, that this was trust building and something he wanted. Let Olsen think he had seen through some sort of chink in Barton’s armor and was finally beginning to understand him.

Take the hearing aids and they would know Hawkeye was hard of hearing, but they wouldn’t know Clint Barton at fucking all. And ultimately wasn’t that the most important part?

Fuck, he hated these mind games, but it wasn’t a game he could win by not playing.

Clint picked up the case.

 

#

 

For a moment Phil thought Barton was going to ignore the olive branch. The mercenary stared at the black case as if he was trying to drill a hole in the case with only his eyes. Phil would give anything to know what the man was thinking, what he suspected SHIELD was trying to do by offering the case. Did he suspect that there were hearing aids inside the case? Or perhaps he thought this was some sort of test. He did seem overly suspicious of everything SHIELD gave him—like the books Hill had left with him. Phil supposed he couldn’t really blame him for that. SHIELD was using everything to learn more about him—how he reacted to the books, to the case— everything was being cataloged away, both by Phil and by the psych guys who analyzed the footage after the fact.

Finally, Barton carefully picked up the case. He unzipped it. His expression did not change as he looked at the contents—no surprise or relief, just the same resting face. Phil knew what he saw inside: a pair of standard earpieces connected to a black pack. They were bottom of the line, what Medical could scrounge up quickly, but Medical had promised that with a few exams they could make Barton a custom pair that would best suit his needs. That however would take longer, and would require the cooperation of Barton himself. In the meantime, this pair should be sufficient enough to help Barton more easily follow conversations.

Morse entered the room as Barton slipped the earpieces into his ears. She watched with Phil in silence as the mercenary started reciting children’s rhymes in a sing-song voice to himself and fiddling with the control pack. “Baa baa black sheep, have you any wool…”

“Well, now I know why he always spoke too loud,” Morse said. Her tone was analytic, so far she had been treating this entire op like it was an experiment. Phil didn’t have any problems with that for this operation, but if she wanted to continue in the field she’d have to work on her bedside manner. Some marks responded better to honey.  “He couldn’t hear himself. How did it take us so long to realize it?”

“He’s very good at lip reading…and faking it,” Phil answered. He still couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen it earlier. Phil had been in this business for nearly twenty years, and this young mercenary had got one over on him. It was impressive and a little bit disconcerting. Phil didn’t think he was losing his edge—he wasn’t that old—but perhaps he had gotten overconfident.

He felt like this whole op was becoming a lesson about Phil Coulson’s pride. Thank God Melinda wasn’t here to see this.

“Fake it ‘til you make it,” Morse said approvingly. “So what’s the next stop, boss? Want me to go in there and pitch him SHIELD again?”

“No.” Definitely not. Even if Barton could hear now, Phil didn’t want to keep barking up the same tree and expecting a different result. They weren’t going to talk Barton into SHIELD. They needed to show him. “We’re going to give him another hour to get acclimated to his ears. Then you and Hill will take him to the Level 3 library. Let him pick any case file he wants and review it with him, be willing to answer whatever questions or find the agent who can answer his questions. We are going to make ourselves an open book to Barton.”

“Yes, sir.” Morse sounded skeptical. This wasn’t quite standard procedure, even when flipping an agent, but when it came to Barton, they had already thrown out the book. They were trying to flip an asset cold, and to do that, they needed to prove that SHIELD was an agency that Barton could trust.

Barton had stopped fiddling with his hearing aids and now was staring hard at the books. He picked up Harry Potter, reading the back cover skeptically. Hill had also been skeptical when Phil had slipped _Harry Potter_ into her stack of books to drop off. But out of the set of books, _Harry Potter_ was by far Phil’s favorite, and he was harboring a small hope that Barton would choose that one. It would give them something unrelated to SHIELD to talk about and bond over, and right now a connection with Barton was something they desperately needed, even if that connection was over a kids’ book.

“Whichever book he chooses,” Phil said, “take note of it, and I’ll want you and Hill to read it. We need something to talk to Barton about other than SHIELD.”

“Not really a fan of Tom Clancy,” Morse said with resignation. “Maybe he’ll pick the Agatha Christie?” Perhaps he would, but right now Barton didn’t seem quick to pick any of the options. He set _Harry Potter_ back on the stack books. Then he stared at the books for a moment, picked up all four, and remarkably, he started juggling them.

The man stood up, still juggling the books, not missing a one as he changed altitude. Phil noticed Barton’s wince as his weight settled into his injured leg, but the pain didn’t affect his juggling.

“Is he humming?” Morse said, leaning forward, as if to hear better. Phil almost hadn’t picked it up, but indeed Hawkeye was humming, softly. It seemed with his hearing aids in Barton was now capable of softer pitches, so soft that the humming was very clearly meant for his ears only.

When Phil realized what song he was humming, he almost laughed. It was just a little on the nose for a a former circus performer to be humming _Entry of the Gladiators._ Was it because juggling made Barton think of his younger days in the circus? Or did he currently feel like he was in a circus, performing for SHIELD?

“He’s clearly bored,” Phil said bringing him back to the issue at hand. The books were not appealing to Barton. Phil could appreciate that. He knew several agents who couldn’t sit still and just needed something to do with their hands—particularly when they were injured or in medical. People who were used to being highly active didn’t do well with the forced sedentary life of medical.

In an hour Morse would go off on her mission to show Barton around the library, and Phil would use that opportunity to find more activities to fill Barton’s room. Boredom was not what they wanted. They wanted Barton to never doubt SHIELD’s generosity and sincerity. They weren’t here to torture Barton. They wanted him to become part of the family.

Phil just had to convince Barton of that.

 

#

 

The movement of juggling helped Clint to relax, to lose himself in the muscle memory. The thing he always hated most about captivity was just the sitting still. Clint was a sniper, he could do it. He could sit still and focus for hours. But the problem with this captivity was that there was nothing to focus on: just stark white walls, the imposing one-way mirror, and his bed. Clint would rather be treed right now, watching the world only through his scope, then stuck in this room.

The juggling came to an end when Agent Ford opened the door and threatened to tranq him again if he didn’t stop putting weight on your leg. “I will put your leg in a cast to keep you from moving it if you can’t behave,” she’d threatened.

So Clint was back in the bed, flipping through the Agatha Christie book. It was _The ABC Murders_ , and he was pretty certain he’d read it before. Mrs. Celestine—the circus’s fortune teller—had been a huge mystery fan and had essentially taught Clint to read with Tarot Cards and cozy mysteries. Clint would have preferred a Miss Marple book to Poirot but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

God, he was so bored. He couldn’t keep his focus on the book. He had too much energy. He wanted to juggle or do push-ups or something. He hated being sick, being confined to a bed, but he really didn’t want to be tranqed again. He started juggling the books again, but this time while laying on his back. This was a bit of a harder trick, the angle awkward, and the perspective skewed, but he didn’t drop one. He never did.

The lights flickered. Clint caught the books and sat up, his eyes on the door as Morse came through. This time Hill was on her heels, which relaxed Clint a tad. The two of them together was normal so far. Seeing Morse alone had been a bit unnatural. They were undoubtedly here to pitch him on SHIELD again.

But then Ford came in behind them, pushing a wheelchair. Were they moving his rooms?

“Mr. Barton,” Morse said. It was his first time hearing her voice, and now he could hear her boredom—as if she was the least important thing on her to-do list and she would rather be anywhere else. “If you would let Agent Ford help you into the wheelchair, we’re going to take you on a little field trip.”

“We understand you have no reason to trust SHIELD,”  Hill said, her words rushed and eager compared to Morse’s. “But we’re hoping to show you that SHIELD has nothing to hide.” Sure, they didn’t. That was why they were a shadowy government organization that the average citizen had never even heard of.

But Clint was supposed to be playing along, making them think he was considering their words and offer. Plus he was bored out of his mind, and while a wheelchair ride around SHIELD wasn’t his idea of fun, it was a chance for a bit of recon, to get the lay of the land. “Okay, sure.”

He didn’t need Ford to help him into the chair—his wound did hurt a bit, but whatever drugs they had him on masked most of it—but he really didn’t want to get on her bad side, and he really didn’t want his leg in a cast. So he let her guide him into the chair. She transferred his IV bag from the rack by his bed to a rack attached to the back of the chair.

Soon enough they were heading down the halls, Morse walking brusquely ahead, Hill by the side of Clint’s chair, and Ford pushing it. (”He’s my patient,” Ford had said crossly when Hill had acted surprised she was coming.) “As I mentioned before,” Hill said—since it seemed she was going to narrate their journey. “SHIELD was originally founded by Peggy Carter and Howard Stark. I’m not sure how familiar you are with Director Carter?”

“Uh, not at all?” Clint said, as he tried to keep track of the halls and turns. The Medical wing gave way to a large corridor filled with people. Some were dressed in blue uniforms, some in lab coats like Morse and the nurses, others in suits like Hill and Olsen, and yet others in casual or workout clothes. And whatever this facility was, it was huge.

“Peggy Carter was an agent in the allied Strategic Scientific Reserve during World War II. It was her unit that engineered Captain America, and she became an integral part of the Howling Commandos.” That got Clint’s attention, the name suddenly clicking in his mind. He had heard of Peggy Carter—Cap loved her. Most Captain America fans didn’t even know about her, but Cap wasn’t just a comics fan, he was a history buff, seeking literally anything about Captain America. Clint had even watched some of the Captain America documentaries just so he could talk more easily with Cap about it. And he remembered Peggy Carter: a knock-out gorgeous brunette with intense brown eyes. But all the documentaries only mentioned her work at the SSR, and then disappearing into a quiet private life. No mention of her starting up a shadowy government organization. Though, if it was a secret thing, he supposed that made sense. “After the war, she discovered the efforts of the SSR to be insufficient for the changing world, so she partnered with Howard Stark—are you familiar with Howard Stark?”

“Sure, big billionaire guy, died a few years ago?”

“Yes,” Hill said, rewarding him with a smile as if he was a student who had gotten the right answer. “They founded SHIELD to deal with issues the other agencies in the world weren’t prepared to deal with.”

“Like what?” Clint asked, actually curious for once. “What can’t the CIA handle that SHIELD can?” Clint didn’t particularly want to work for SHIELD, but God, Cap would eat this stuff up. An agency founded by Peggy Carter, who Cap had once called his personal hero? Not that Clint supposed they’d let him tell Cap about SHIELD, and not that Clint would want to explain how he got in SHIELD’s hands. But there had to be some way he could point Cap in SHIELD’s direction. A line of research that would cause him to uncover this organization that Peggy Carter had created. And that would be all they would have to tell Cap to get him to join up. “Come consult for us, we were founded by Peggy Carter.” He would drop his current job in a heartbeat.

But Cap was a dreamer like that, a true believer. It was one of the things Clint liked about him. Cap, like his namesake, believed in the goodness of people. He would be like Agent Hill—believing in the goodness of the organization based on the goodness of Peggy Carter. Clint, however, wasn’t a dreamer. He had seen first hand how bright colors, popcorn, and clowns were often just a misdirection from the darkness beneath.

“Sometimes I question what the CIA _can_ handle,” Hill answered. “But You wouldn’t believe the number of nations and organizations that tried to replicate Dr. Erskine’s work in developing Captain America. If SHIELD existed only to deal with unfortunate attempts at replicating the super soldier serum, it would be enough. Not to mention cleaning up Hydra after World War II. The CIA doesn’t have the technological expertise to deal with these sorts of advanced sciences. SHIELD isn’t just a spy agency, Mr. Barton. We’re on the forefront of science, and we have to be. The number of illegal organizations, delving into unethical technologies—DNA tampering, human cloning, biochemical weapons...No, the CIA and FBI are not equipped to handle these things.” Huh. Clint had never really considered that there had to be other people attempting to replicate the super soldier serum. And Clint wasn’t much of a science guy, but even he had seen the cloning debates in the news, the concerns over not just the ethics but the repercussions of such technology. He had never considered that there needed to be an organization that stood in that gap—prepared to go in and not just shut down illegal operations but deal with whatever science being developed. And it explained why they had agents like Morse: beautiful, undoubtedly deadly, and with a PhD.

“Should you be telling me this?” Clint asked.

“SHIELD is an open book to you, Mr. Barton,” Hill responded. “We want you to join us. That’s why we’re taking you to the Library—our archives. We know you’ll be suspicious of any file we bring you, but you can pull and read over any file you want. Read over our ops. Ask questions. Morse and I will do our best to answer and if we can’t, we’ll find someone who can. We have nothing to hide. We’re the good guys.” In Clint’s experience, people who declared themselves good guys rarely were, but he didn’t say that.

He would play along, and he would review as many files as he could. He would be stupid not to. Natasha would want to know anything and everything. He knew SHIELD wouldn’t even come close to showing him any of their secrets, and that the files he was to select from were probably carefully curated. But even the most innocent file could give something away.

SHIELD was a shadow agency, and as long as Clint was behind the curtain, he should learn all he could.

 

#

 

Phil stared at his email inbox, trying to will a response from Grayson into existence.

Since Barton had been brought to SHIELD, Phil hadn’t spent a lot of time at his desk. He spent most every moment in the observation room, studying Barton and figuring out the plan forward. However, HR had sent word that if he didn’t respond to his email soon they were neither going to process his Level 5 promotion nor the transfer of Morse and Hill. Thus, Phil found himself back at his desk, for the moment at least, while Morse and Hill showed Barton around the library.

All in all the emails were mostly good news. The HR emails were easy enough to respond to: print out, sign a few forms, and drop them in the outbox for HR to process. There was even an email from Victoria Hand, grudgingly congratulating him on the capture of Hawkeye.

It was Phil’s personal email that didn’t seem to be co-operating. Or more realistically, his pen pal.

He hadn’t heard from Grayson in two weeks. It wasn’t the longest Phil had ever gone without a response from Grayson—that had been three torturous weeks in the late summer last year, when Grayson had taken a gig somewhere deep in a jungle with no internet access. Two weeks was nothing to get worked up over, Phil knew, but he itched to hear from the other man.

Sometimes he just wished he could pick up a phone and call him. Or he day-dreamed that Grayson was local and they would meet for dinner or catch up over a quick cup of coffee. But Phil couldn’t really imagine Grayson living in New York City. He had no idea what the man looked like, but when he imagined him, Grayson was a ruggedly handsome cowboy, a young Clint Eastwood type, riding through the open planes—but on a motorcycle, since Grayson didn’t actually own a horse. “Too much upkeep for my current lifestyle,” Grayson had said once in an email. Grayson might visit him in the city one day, and Phil would love that—to show him the sights, to take him to a festival or two, to show him what he was missing. But Grayson living in the city? The man would probably feel claustrophobic, and Phil would never box him in like that.

God, Phil was wistfully day-dreaming like a middle schooler with a crush. He needed to get a hold of himself. Grayson would email him when he got back from his job. Meanwhile Phil would focus on his own job, and not wistfully sigh at his computer. He would not think about Grayson and instead focus on Barton.

Which meant back to his carefully constructed list of how to earn Barton’s trust. The first items on his list were already checked off or set in motion; Phil had even used the beginning of his free time—while Barton was in the Library—to outfit Barton’s medical room with more things to entertain him, since the books didn’t seem to be making the cut. Which was a real shame, because Phil wouldn’t have minded at all having someone to talk about _Harry Potter_ with, even if it was a lethal assassin they were trying to convert to their cause.

Phil knew what an organization like SHIELD looked like on the outside: shadowy with questionable motivations. That was what anyone assumed when they thought of a secret government organization, especially one like SHIELD that was world-wide. But Phil needed to show Barton that they were different. This wasn’t the KGB or even the CIA. SHIELD was different. Peggy Carter had set it up to be something different, a shield for the world, founded on the ideals and principles of Captain America himself.

How could he convince Barton of that? Sure, Morse and Hill were allowing him to peruse any file he wanted to right now, but that was only of the Level 3 library, the lowest classification. Barton was naturally suspicious, and would probably assume that any more nefarious operations were classified at higher levels and out of his reach. But there were no nefarious ones. Well, _no_ might be strong. Phil had been on a few operations that on surface level had seemed questionable, and sometimes it was hard to see if there was a greater good beneath it. Fury didn’t even always trust Phil with the whole truth, that man’s secrets had secrets, but Phil trusted Fury, and he believed in SHIELD.

But the trust and belief had been earned—by Fury, by Peggy Carter, by Steve Rogers. Barton may not know any of those people—he probably knew Steve Rogers, though perhaps not much about him. Asking Barton to put trust into SHIELD because of people he didn’t know was asking too much. Phil needed to find something that would make Barton, if not believe in SHIELD, at least be curious enough to want to stick around.

He needed to show Barton a threat bigger than anything he could imagine, something that would make Barton stop and pause. Phil needed to show him a threat so big, that Barton would choose to overlook any dark seedy underbelly that SHIELD may have. Or Phil needed to show him something so cool that Barton would have to be insane not to leap at the chance to be involved in it.

Phil only knew of one threat like that—incredibly dangerous and undeniably cool—and it was classified at Level 6. Phil technically didn’t even have the classification to know about, but as he had been there, SHIELD couldn’t do anything about that. For Phil to tell Barton would require a sign off from Fury himself, especially since Phil would need to borrow Fury’s cat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next week: Clint learns a lot of interesting facts about SHIELD as well as a couple of things about the universe that he had never really considered before.
> 
> For reference: [Entry of the Gladiators](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_B0CyOAO8y0). it's basically "that circus clown song." lol
> 
> Also, I highly suggest everyone who reads this fic, read concertigrossi's fic [Level Up](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19057081). It's amazing and highly influential on my next chapter of this story. :)
> 
> Also just wanted to drop a note to thank you all for reading and commenting! It means so much to me. I love this fic and this set up, and I'm so excited for you guys to read some of the stuff coming up! *hugs*
> 
> As usual you can follow me on tumblr at the-feels-assassin. :D


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